Comrades of War (24 page)

‘Gladly,’ Tiny answered, confident of victory. ‘Since you’re so keen on getting rid of your sausages.’

They bet, and when at the end of five minutes the dog hadn’t yet delivered the gut, Tiny demanded his sausages. He got them.

He immediately rammed his teeth into them and swallowed big hunks of each one as if afraid he wouldn’t be allowed to keep them.

‘Damn dog,’ Peters cursed and made threatening gestures at the yellow mongrel in the corner which followed Tiny’s guzzling with greedy eyes.

Suddenly the dog stood up. Its body was shaken by a violent spasm – there was the appendix.

‘Hand over the sausages,’ Peters yelled joyfully and lunged at what was still left of them. ‘He couldn’t stand looking at you stuffing yourself.’

Tiny’s face flushed deep red. He spat after the dog.

‘You yellow bastard! You son of a bitch! I’m going to stuff it down your throat again.’

Before Peters had succeeded in snatching the last sausage away from him. Tiny had taken a big bite from it. He grabbed the dog by the scruff of the neck and ground its nose in the vomit. The dog put up a fierce struggle, scratching the floor with its claws.

The Legionnaire cursed and asked him to stop it right away.

In a fit of magnanimity, Peters let Tiny have one of the sausages. He told as in confidence that in Ward Number 7 there was an artilleryman who could eat all sorts of vermin.

‘Phew! I’d like to see him,’ Bauer said.

‘Let’s go up there and take a closer look at that worm of an artilleryman,’ Tiny proposed.

‘Can he eat frogs?’ I asked. ‘I once saw a Russian doing that for schnapps.’

‘As if that was anything,’ the Legionnaire cut in. He never let himself be impressed by anything. ‘I saw someone swallowing glass and tubes till his throat was on fire.’

‘Good it wasn’t his ass,’ Tiny said. ‘But let’s take a look at that gunner and put him to the test. He’s going to eat two frogs and a razor blade, and if he doesn’t we’ll give him a beating.’

‘I just hope you won’t meet a fellow some day who’ll give you a beating,’ the little Legionnaire warned.

‘Such a fellow doesn’t exist,’ Tiny decided confidently.

On our way through the garden to Ward 7, Tiny found a frog. Much to his annoyance he could find only one. He found an earthworm also.

‘You pig,’ the Legionnaire said.

The artilleryman turned out to be a short, stocky, muscular miner with shovels for fists. His thick eyebrows were grown together on his stupid low forehead. His small black eyes stared dumbly at us. He grinned proudly when Peters asked him if he could eat a frog.

‘I can eat anything, but not for nothing.’

‘I’ll give you one on the jaw if you don’t do it,’ Tiny said, shaking one of his large fists at him.

‘You’d better shut up,’ the artilleryman answered. ‘I can lick anyone, you too, you big hulk.’

Tiny brought his fists together with a resounding smack.

‘Did you hear that? Did you hear what that crud said? By everything that’s good and sacred, I’ll kill him! I’ll grind him to sausage meat and let that yellow dog lap him up.’

‘You’re free to try,’ the artilleryman grinned, quite untouched by Tiny’s excitement.

Tiny was going to rush him, but the Legionnaire held him back.

‘
Merde
, leave him alone. No ruckus here!’

Tiny looked around, eager for a fight.

‘I won’t stand for that! I must kill him, or I’ll bust! Holy Virgin, I swear I have to strangle him.’

‘Shut up, Tiny,’ the Legionnaire ruled. ‘You can take care of him when you meet him in town.’

The artilleryman guffawed and turned to his comrades. ‘Tell them about me, fellows, and bring that lame ox back to earth.’

A mountain chasseur got up and came over to us. In almost unintelligible dialect, he said: ‘Emil over there can break a table leg with his bare fists. He can knock down a cow.’ He swung his arm and felled an imaginary cow. ‘He goes like this – and next, the cow groans in her sleep. He can lift an artillery horse off the ground with saddle and all.’

Snorting contemptuously, Tiny walked over to the large three-light window. He took hold of the frame and gave a couple of tentative tugs at it. Then he pulled with all his strength. The room rang with loud creaking and cracking noises and Tiny was showered by plaster and bricks. Then he stood there with the large window frame in his hands. He looked around triumphantly, then dropped it. It crashed against the flagstones in the garden, where shouts and curses could be heard.

The inmates of the ward protested loudly.

The artilleryman nodded and heaved himself to his feet. He grabbed hold of the large table in the middle of the floor, tore off a leg and broke it on the edge of a bed.

Tiny shrugged his shoulders. He seized a bed occupied by a patient and lifted it above his head, making the occupant scream with terror. Then he hurled the bed and everything in it straight through the room. It ended up in the artilleryman’s bed, which got totally crushed. Then he walked over to the only washbowl in the room, broke it loose with such force that bolts went flying around his ears, and pitched it at the still grinning artilleryman.

‘We want quiet in the ward!’ a sergeant major yelled from his bed.

Tiny looked at him. ‘You shall have it, my boy!’ He hit him twice over the head so that he passed out.

‘Now that you’ve untidied my bed I suggest you straighten it out,’ the artilleryman said, pointing at the big mess.

‘You snotty bum,’ Tiny yelled. ‘I’m going to mess your guts up so bad that even your mother will be ashamed of you!’ Growling, he walked over to the artilleryman who was standing in the middle of the room as if the whole matter didn’t concern him.

Tiny hit him only three times. The artilleryman went down, his mouth gaping in vacant surprise. Before he managed to get up, Tiny gave him a kick in the face.

The Legionnaire nodded to the rest of us. We seized Tiny and dragged him away from the room.

‘You’ll get caged for this,’ Peters prophesied. ‘They’ll rat on you. I’m pretty sure they’ll rat on you. The worst part is the window and the washbowl.’

‘Yeah, why? A whole lot of washbowls and windows go up in smoke these days, you know,’ Tiny said. ‘I had to show those fellows who I am.’ He took the frog out of his pocket and dropped it on the writing desk of one of the nurses.

She flew into a rage.

‘Shut up, you officers’ bedwarmer,’ Tiny shouted modestly, ‘or I’ll give your ass such a shellacking you’ll think the whole military academy has been banging you.’

As Peters had prophesied, they did return. After being fed with fresh phosphorus from the air, the still smoldering fires blazed up again.

More victims. Barefoot children toddled down flights of stairs to die like rats in humid cellars.

Somewhere close to the harbor, diagonally across from Admiralstrasse, a group of prisoners were trudging off to find shelter in a warehouse. The SS guards were making an awful racket and smacking them with rifle butts and whips to make them hurry up.

They didn’t even hear the screech from the direct hit that got them. All that was left of them was a pool of bloody, writhing mash, beside the usual pervasive stench of blood, saltpeter, and scorched flesh.

A legless SS man dragged himself blubbering over to a prisoner whose abdomen had been ripped up. They died in each other’s arms. And together they were burned to cinders by the engineers’ flame throwers.

Around Mönckebergstrasse a figure was prowling about, bending down when he came across a corpse. A knife flashed, a finger dropped to the ground, and a ring vanished into a capacious pocket. The dark spectral figure flitted on to the next corpse. The fourth one he got to moved and cried out. A stroke with a charred board, a groan. Nimble fingers rapidly searched a quivering body. A billfold, a passport, two rings, and a purse was the booty.

Then on to the next. He must make the most of the panic and the terror. On Hansaplatz, in Kaiser Wilhelm-Strasse, around the Alster – the same sight everywhere.

At the corner of Alter Wall and Rödingsmarkt a woman let out a piercing shriek of insane horror. A small catlike figure pounced upon her. Steel claws closed tight about her neck and caused the scream to die down. He kicked her in the hollows of her knees till she fell over. With feverish fingers he grabbed her under the close-fitting skirt and ripped the sheer underwear to pieces. The woman kicked frantically, but her legs were powerless against his agile strong body.

Hot soothing words rang in her ear, while a flickering tongue fluttered across her face.

‘Please, let me do it, please! What’s the harm? Nothing will happen to you. Why don’t you let me!’ His voice was almost tender. ‘When it’s over I’ll let you run!’

The woman chanced it. Better this than death. She sobbed, she moaned and whimpered in fright. Far above them a Christmas tree flared up. From the Alster Canal came the sound of gurgling water. High up in the air target indicators stood out in luminous and blinding white. Dust and flames surged to the sky. The earth trembled like the woman under the rapist.

The young woman had been on her way to a shelter when she met the sick jackal lurking in the night.

Don’t cry, she thought. Let him do everything, or he’ll kill me.

A bomb dropped. They didn’t notice, didn’t feel the earth showering them. Carefully, tenderly, he pulled off one long stocking, ran his lips along it, kissed it, hid his face in it. His breath came fast and short. In the glow from the surrounding blaze his eyes shone with a glazed stare. He bit her face, grabbed her hair with one hand, with the other quickly twisted the stocking about her neck, and pulled tight. She gurgled, kicked and hit out savagely.

The man laughed.

Her lips went blue. Her eyes popped out from their sockets. Her mouth opened. She went limp, stiffened – she was dead. Strangled with her own stocking.

He stuck her panties in his pocket.

Once again he was quiet. He looked at the desecrated corpse and smiled. Fell on his knees and folded his hands.

‘O Lord, my God, holy ruler. I’m your scourge. A she-devil has been punished as you commanded me!’

Then he got up, bent over the corpse and cut a cross on her forehead. He laughed loudly and vanished over charred beams and rubble.

A little later the murdered person was found by two women. They burst out screaming. Seized with panic, they rushed off as fast as their legs could carry them.

This was the fifth woman murdered in a short time.

The case went from the Criminal Investigation Department to the Gestapo.

Kriminalrat
Paul Bielert took over the inquiry, ‘Pretty Paul,’ Aunt Dora’s protector.

In black overcoat and white gloves he stood silently looking at the corpse. The long silver cigarette holder dangled from the corner of his mouth. A bit of ash got stuck on his sleeve. Reverently he brushed it clean, then held a scented handkerchief to his nose.

His men rushed around barking like terriers. Commanded, measured, and took photographs.

A doctor rose to his feet. An old shabby figure. A typical police doctor.

‘Before he strangled her she was raped. The cuts were inflicted after death.’

‘Rather than giving me all that rubbish, tell me who did it! I’ll have to consider whether you wouldn’t benefit from a trip to the Eastern Front!’

He turned his back on the doctor and slowly walked down the street toward Neuer Wall, where his Mercedes was waiting.

He saw nothing, heard nothing. His brain worked at high pressure. In the service of the Security Police this same brain had devised the most diabolic methods of torture. At long last the brain that had helped to bring Edgar André to the gallows several years before the war was being used for something sensible.

On the fourth floor of Police Headquarters on Karl Muck Platz the casualties were being added up. It could never be determined quite accurately how many were dead and missing, but a couple of hundreds more or less didn’t really matter. An old frowsy typist assembled the lists. After a lot of jabbering back and forth they had arrived at 3,418 dead and as many wounded. In addition came the large number of missing. Many had been completely incinerated by the flame-throwers which the pioneer soldiers used in their clean-up operations.

Cards were crossed off and filed. A pile of stamped death certificates with facsimiles, and then everything was ready for the next attack.

A civilized society must maintain order.

‘Pretty Paul’ was sitting with a couple of colleagues in room 367 on the third floor. They were studying five photos of murdered women. The youngest was 16, the oldest 32. All of them had a bloodstained cross on their forehead. Every one had been strangled with a stocking, and in every single case the murderer had taken the panties with him.

‘The man is a soldier,’ Paul Bielert said suddenly, standing up.

His three colleagues looked at him in surprise. An SS man helped him on with his coat. He primly slipped his hands into his white gloves. With the long silver cigarette holder stuck in his mouth he left Police Headquarters.

For hours he walked through smoking streets, holding the scented handkerchief to his mouth. Now and then a passerby would glance warily at him. Others greeted the great man from Karl Muck Platz humbly and ingratiatingly.

He visited Aunt Dora, chatted with her girls and yelled at the pimp, Ewald, till the poor man felt groggy. He strolled down Neuer Wall, dropping in several places.

Toward evening he entered a de luxe restaurant at Baumwall, situated a couple of floors underground. From the outside it resembled more than anything an old, dilapidated basement junk shop, but after the visitor had walked down two flights of steep concrete stairs, he was in for a surprise. Here a new world opened up. Subterranean halls with automatic ventilation and an air conditioning plant. Tables dressed with white cloths and the finest china and silverware stood in cosy little rooms and intimate niches. Colored table lamps enhanced the charm. There were upholstered club chairs and heavy carpets on the floors and in the corridors. Waiters in full evening dress, followed by assistants in shining white jackets with red lapels, served the laughing, elegant guests.