Comrades of War (19 page)

The General adjusted his monocle and kicked at a Bible lying forlorn on the floor.

The Battleship rapped the counter with her green umbrella, sending dust and a pile of documents flying about their ears.

A police sergeant squeaked: ‘Precinct 7, nothing particular to report!’

‘Bastard,’ the Battleship answered, poking his beer-filled belly with her umbrella.

‘Certainly, Madam,’ the sergeant agreed. He clicked his heels once more for good measure. It was the first time he’d been within such close range of a real general, an artillery general into the bargain. It completely confused him.

Sergeant Major Braun came rumbling from his cage behind the cell corridor, puffed himself up in Prussian manner, and rattled off a meaningless report which he didn’t have a chance to finish before the Major hissed: ‘Lie down, Sergeant Major!’

Braun, unable to understand, shook his bull’s head. That order couldn’t possibly have anything to do with him. It was at least ten years since he had drilled ‘lie down’ and ‘advance by rushes.’

The Major crinkled his nose, adjusted his artillery cap with the fiery red braids, and rapped his riding whip against the legs of his shiny black boots.

‘Really, this fellow refuses to obey orders!’

The General nodded and stared hard at Braun through his monocle. What else could be expected from a lousy infantryman? His artilleryman’s soul was filled with contempt.

The Battleship nodded, narrowed her eyes to a slit, ominously thrust out her double chins, and yelled through the whole Precinct: ‘Lie down, you pig’s ear!’

Braun threw himself on the floor like a mountain caving in after a dynamite explosion.

‘Forward crawl!’ the Major commanded.

Edging along on his elbows, Sergeant Major Braun crawled around on the floor. He had to run through the entire drill-book before the Major was satisfied.

Squatting, he bumped into a swivel chair. He rolled in week-old filth. He whined like a cat with its back bitten by a bulldog. He hopped like a magpie and made absurd attempts to do handstands. In the process he smashed three chairs, knocked down a typewriter, kicked his sergeant’s knees, and hit his own nose till it bled.

‘Exercise is what this bunch needs,’ the artillery general boomed and spat at a photograph of the famous commander of infantry, General Ludendorff. With unflagging energy he chased the entire personnel of the Precinct round the room till their lungs were close to bursting. He threatened the whole pack with court-martial, the Eastern Front and the inescapable hero’s death.

The last words he shouted before he demanded Tiny’s release were perfectly chosen for instilling terror into a member of the SS: ‘This mess will be brought to the Führer! I’ll immediately dispatch your imminent transfer to a battle unit!’

A feeble ‘Certainly, Herr General’ came from the deeply shocked MPs.

To Tiny he thundered: ‘We’ll talk with you later!’

Noticing the penal regiment band, he blushed and piped down. He adjusted his broad belt with the little Mauser, brushed some motes of dust from his blood-red lapel and drew a deep breath: ‘You’ll be taking a trip by sled, just wait and see! The Eastern Front is waiting!’ He winked at the Battleship and hit out at Tiny standing there looking stupid. ‘In case of an attempt to escape, this lady will not hesitate to use her weapon!’

Then they took off.

But nor before the Lieutenant-Colonel had received Tiny’s papers. He slapped the police sergeant on the shoulder with them and assured him: ‘You’ll never forget this, Sergeant!’ Tiny blinked his bruised eyes. Growling sounds emerged from his swollen mouth. The Lieutenant-Colonel eyed him critically, smacked him in the side with the documents and said, ‘I won’t forget you, soldier. I’ll keep an eye on you. Do your duty and you’ll fall happily for the Fatherland!’

Tiny had sort of come to attention and was staring stupidly at the Lieutenant-Colonel, who skipped after the others in peculiar waltz time.

Tiny spat on the floor and said, ‘Come, Emma, we’re clearing out!’

She took his hand and pulled him along like a little boy who has had a fall in the street and now is going home to be soothed by mother.

Tiny was put to bed on milk and rusks. Later he had homemade cookies with cocoa.

The Battleship and sister Annelise tucked him up in bed with blankets to keep him from being cold. Late in the night, after things were quiet, he and the Legionnaire got drunk. They whispered together for hours. Now and then we caught words like ‘head-hunters’ and ‘monkey face.’

It was quite late on Saturday when they decided to look up ‘Monkey-Face’ to discuss his conduct with him in private. They were in a very exalted mood when they set out, and thanks to a bottle of vodka which the Legionnaire had brought with him, the mood improved as they approached their goal.

They found Braun in his underpants. He appeared extremely bewildered, possibly because of the late, unannounced visit. Naturally it took some time for him to recognize Tiny, and when he did, the joy of reunion was decidedly on Tiny’s side. Tiny was fabulously sociable. He tickled unarmed Braun under the chin with his battle knife, pinched his cheek coquettishly and promised to slash his throat.

Sergeant Major Braun managed only to utter a half-smothered scream before the steel fingers of the Legionnaire closed about his throat and squeezed the air out of him.

‘I want to send him off myself,’ Tiny protested as Braun started turning lilac.

Mrs Braun was a zealous member of the Nazi Women’s Organization and looked it. She appeared in the door to the conjugal bedroom, and before she realized what actually was happening she commanded in a shrill voice: ‘I demand quiet immediately!’

Despite the subdued blackout illumination, there was light enough to show that her wispy hair was studded with paper curlers. To ward off a beginning cold, she had twined a pair of blue woollen ladies’ panties about her neck. Her flannel nightgown was almost new and faintly pink. On her feet she had Wehrmacht socks. Like everything else, the nightgown had belonged to the former owner of the apartment, a Jewish widow who had died in Neuengamme.

Mrs Braun’s taking possession of that apartment was the fulfillment of a wish she had entertained for a long time. Three years had passed since the widow and her three children were picked up by the SS. The arrest went so rapidly that mother and children were unable to take anything with them except what they had on, and that wasn’t much, since they were picked up at 3 o’clock in the morning.

Mrs Braun took part in the action, dressed in high boots and a leather jacket. On the stairs, the youngest child, a boy of three, lost a shoe. When he got into the street, wet with rain, he cried and said he was cold. An SS
Unterscharführer
gave him a smack in the face and said:

‘Here’s heat for you, you miserable Jew brat!’

Mrs Braun spat in the mother’s face and kicked her in the shins. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll see to you and your kids when we get to the camp.’

Then she walked in and started moving around the furniture of the Jewish family. She wanted to have it arranged to her own taste before the Sergeant Major returned from the Precinct.

The Jewish mother and the two youngest children were sent to the gas chamber. The oldest child, a girl of 15, ended up in a camp brothel.

Tiny had discovered all of this through many strange channels, known only to those who are at odds with society.

Tiny squinted at Mrs Braun. His throat made some gurgling animal noises. He stretched out a hairy hand and grabbed the scrawny, vicious human snake by her hair.

She screamed, but only briefly. He slammed her head against the door panel. Then he dropped the lifeless body to the ground with a hollow thud.

‘She’s a devil,’ he said to the Legionnaire and stamped on the woman’s face with his heavy boots.

He strangled Braun with a piece of steel wire. When he was sure he was dead, he mumbled piously: ‘
Et cum spiritu tuo
,’ the only thing he remembered from his childhood Catholic reform school in Minden.

When they left they checked scrupulously if the door was properly latched.

‘Thieves might come,’ Tiny said. ‘All kinds of trash are hanging around, you know.’ Then he hitched up his trousers and followed the Legionnaire.

When they returned to Aunt Dora she put up two glasses for them and said: ‘How about another glass, fellows?’ She said it as if they had just taken off for a dance a moment ago.

‘Well, here’s to the big rat,’ the Legionnaire said as they lifted their glasses.

Aunt Dora took an akvavit with bitters for herself and gave out a long and heart-felt sigh.

‘Did you get them?’ she asked, puffing away at her white cheroot.

The Legionnaire looked at her and winked, clicked his tongue and raised the refilled glass: ‘Here’s to you, Aunt Dora!’

She grinned: ‘And to the death of all those you’re going to settle with!’

They tossed off their glasses.

‘I’ll be damned,’ the Legionnaire burped, ‘but there’s nothing as good as this. For all the things that trouble you.’

Should anyone be naive enough to ask Aunt Dora if they had been with her all night, she would swear on her soul’s salvation that they had never left the room.

But no one asked. The darkness of oblivion had fallen on Monkey-Face.

Next morning the Canadians attacked Hamburg and the part of town where he had lived was a sea of flames.

Tiny looked at the Legionnaire and said, ‘Thank Heavens we decided to go over there yesterday! Or we’d have come too late. And then we’d never get to Allah’s garden where the eternal flowers grow, Desert Rambler!’

‘You shouldn’t scoff at serious things,’ the Legionnaire gently reproved him.

‘You have to make contacts,’ said Aunt Dora. ‘It’s essential, like vitamins.’

‘Pretty Paul’ was a good contact. He sent people to the gallows or exempted them from compulsory conscription just as it suited his book. Unless it paid, he did nothing for anybody. It wouldn’t pay to neglect doing something for Aunt Dora. When she called, he came.

‘Pretty Paul’ was one of the most pernicious vipers in the Third Reich, but Aunt Dora possessed serum against his bite.

She laughed and scratched her fat thighs with a corkscrew as she followed the retreat of the Security men with her eyes.

She poured the gin that ‘Pretty Paul’ had sniffed at into the sink as if it were a corrosive acid.

Tiny was sorry for the gin. Stein and the infantry sergeant felt the same way.

VIII

Wind Force 11

We were discharged from the army hospital on a Wednesday. The boss,
Oberstabsarzt
Dr Mahler, kept muttering as he moved about flapping his arms. While shaking hands, he looked us straight in the eye and said something nice to each of us.

It took us three days to say good-bye. Tiny surpassed himself in piggish excesses at the whorehouse. The girls would never forget him as long as they lived.

The Legionnaire and I got stone blind at Aunt Dora’s in Wind Force 11. Aunt Dora drank with us. Once in a while she would mumble something under her breath and look at the Legionnaire. She was chain-smoking cheroots. The ashtray was filled to the brim.

We sat in a narrow niche protected by a subdued red light.

‘Your absinthe tastes like putrid licorice,’ the Legionnaire said.

‘And you’re a Moroccan pimp,’ Aunt Dora answered caustically.

‘What are you going to do when the war’s over?’ I asked, just for the sake of saying something. I couldn’t think of anything else just at that moment.

The little Legionnaire finished off his glass and snapped his fingers at Trude, the girl from Berlin, who brought him a refill. She was about to take the bottle away, but Aunt Dora caught her wrist and snarled: ‘Leave the pot!’

Trude winced at the rough grip and almost said something, but a sharp ‘Scram, you cow!’ caused her to vanish behind the bar counter as quickly as she could.

‘What am I going to do when the war’s over?’ muttered the little Legionnaire, as if addressing himself.

You could see he was thinking intensely. He drank a little and rolled the liquid on his tongue.

‘First, I’ll give you a few smacks for asking such a stupid question.’ He drank a bit more, turned his glass in his hand and intently scrutinized the colored reflections. ‘The first two weeks I’m going to be dead drunk from morning till night. Then I’ll have to cut the throats of a couple of acquaintances of mine. If I can bring myself to do it,’ he added in a moment. ‘Maybe I’ll do some fast business.’

‘In women, I suppose?’ Aunt Dora cut in.

‘Well, why not?’ the Legionnaire asked and raised his eyebrows. ‘One thing’s like another. In certain places there’s a shortage of women, and scarce goods bring high prices. If we’d met twenty years ago, you’d have fetched a handsome sum, you fat-assed bitch. I’d have gotten stinking drunk on the money I made on you, and you’d have had fun with a whole battalion in an Algiers whorehouse.’

‘Swine,’ came Aunt Dora’s only comment.

‘Let’s have another beer,’ I proposed.

We had another beer and mixed a double absinthe in each glass.

‘It cleanses the kidneys,’ Aunt Dora said.

‘After boozing and selling sluts,’ the Legionnaire went on, ‘and after cutting the throats of a couple of guys whose ties I don’t like, I’ll retire just as quietly and live like a rich man on the other side of the ocean. In some place where there are no stinking police.’

He laughed at the thought.

‘You won’t even get yourself to believe that,’ Aunt Dora said. She lit a fresh cheroot with the one just finished.

‘
Merde
, what do you know about that? Why shouldn’t I believe it?’ The Legionnaire was working himself up. ‘
Sacre nom de Dieu
, why shouldn’t I be able to sell the bitches? I could even sell you, though you’d fetch only a sou.’

‘You’re nuts,’ Aunt Dora said. But she didn’t take offense. ‘Do you want me to tell you what you’ll do when you’re through with Hitler’s war? You’ll dive into the first French recruiting office you come to and put your scrawl to a twenty-four year contract!’