B      U      N      K      E      R

He had a favourite story, about how, as a young boy, he and some friends explored the tunnels under Berlin, and they came across a large cavern which turned out to be part of the secret bunker where Hitler spent his final days. The story was well embellished with details of where they entered the tunnel system, how far they had gone, the route they took, and just how they knew that they were under the Reichschancellery, and so on. Of course nobody was inclined to believe him, not least of all because he was drunk at the time, but he had worked out the story in such elaborate detail, and there was something about the way he obviously believed in it that made me almost want it to be true.

One detail in particular stuck with me - his description of how even in those empty tunnels there were always flies, which would buzz around and land on his head. I was young myself when he told me this story, and had seen photographs of the mass graves at Auschwitz, and noticed flies in those pictures, too. While it was creepy to think of those flies crawling on dead bodies, I couldn't help imagining that those same flies might have landed on Hitler's skull. There was something almost reassuring to know that at least even Hitler came to this same end.