Comrades of War (6 page)

Two ladies sat down by the Legionnaire. They were well-dressed, arrogant ladies, no common barflies. One of them gave the Legionnaire a quick glance. She crossed her legs and her skirt came up above her knee. There was a hint of a flaring white petticoat. The two ladies drank champagne. The best, they’d ordered. The Legionnaire lit a fresh cigarette with the butt of his old one and squinted at the champagne. Pointing at the filled glasses, he asked:

‘
Chateauneuf, est-il le meilleur?
’

The ladies pretended they hadn’t heard.

His face distorted with haughtiness and expectant victory, the Legionnaire bent over to the dark lady, called Lisa by her friend. The other’s name was Gisela. ‘How about a throw for a hundred marks?’

The lady answered nothing, but her cheeks flushed. It could have been the champagne. The Legionnaire laughed. Aunt Dora stood with her back to the counter, but she could see the whole thing in a tiny mirror among the glasses. She laughed. I laughed. Bauer laughed. Tiny was drinking, cursing, and babbling wildly about girls.

‘Do you want to come upstairs and play a little? I’ll give you two hundred marks and a new pair of panties,’ said the Legionnaire in an undertone.

Aunt Dora laughed over her bitters. With Danish schnapps she used only angostura. It cleansed the soul, she used to say. A pastor had once told her that her soul would be hard to wash clean. That’s why she drank the hot stuff.

‘You should be ashamed of yourself,’ Lisa said, turning the Legionnaire down. She had almost emptied her glass in one swallow. She must have done it by mistake; her friend Gisela had only sipped at hers. Laughing softly, the Legionnaire ordered a refill for her from Trude, a waitress from Berlin helping out Aunt Dora at the bar. He winked at her. Trude understood.

Madame Lisa’s glass received a couple of dashes from a special bottle. Aunt Dora alone knew the contents of this bottle. Whatever it was, a few drops mixed in a girl’s drink always produced results. Lisa was completely unsuspecting and picked up her glass. Turning around from her glasses, Aunt Dora poured out a drink for the Legionnaire and told him, stressing every word: ‘You are a filthy swine. But good luck. Filth makes money, my boy.’

The Legionnaire laughed.

‘Madame, four hundred down and new undies from France,’ he wheedled, then went back to blowing smoke rings.

Trude moistened a perfectly clean glass with her breath and polished away as if trying to wear it out. A smile hovered about her lips. Like all of us she was excited, because she knew the Legionnaire couldn’t have anything to do with women and didn’t want to, either.

‘You’re repulsive,’ said Lisa, demonstratively turning her back on the cruelly grinning Legionnaire in his black panzer uniform with small silver death’s heads on the lapels.

‘
Sacre nom de Dieu!
’ the Legionnaire exclaimed, feigning surprise.

Aunt Dora stuck a long cheroot in her mouth and turned to the Legionnaire. ‘Give me a light, you African bastard.’

The Legionnaire obliged and rubbed his nose. ‘What d’you think, should I hire that lady for a turn in bed?’

‘Now shut up, you swine, and leave the lady alone. She wants none of you, and you of her. You know that well enough.’

She sat down on a tall chair across from the Legionnaire, who turned again to Lisa. ‘You have beautiful legs, madame.
Mon Dieu
, you’ve got damn beautiful legs. I wouldn’t mind undressing you. Six hundred in cash if you’ll let me undress you! How about a dance, madame?’

‘No, and do leave me alone. I’m not what you think I am.’

The Legionnaire raised his eyebrow. ‘You don’t say so! What a shame.’

Aunt Dora blew smoke in the Legionnaire’s face. Her brutal mouth smiled.

‘What did you take the lady for?’ Bauer asked.

The Legionnaire smiled, pulled his nose and took a swallow from his glass.

‘A distinguished lady looking for adventure, not a cheap slut going out in her mistress’ clothes.’

Lisa sprang up. In the next second the Legionnaire’s cheek resounded with a slap. With lightning speed he caught her by the wrists. He twisted his lips to a snarl, showing a row of pearly white teeth.

‘
Merde
, so the little thing is showing her claws? Tiny,
c’est bien ça
. Madame would like to dance.’

Tiny slid heavily down from his bar stool and slouched up to them like a gorilla.

‘Brassy fellow, I don’t want to dance,’ Lisa snorted.

‘Of course you do,’ the Legionnaire decided. He nodded to Tiny.

She tried to free herself, but the sinewy fingers of the Legionnaire locked her wrists like a steel trap. A heavy gleaming gold bracelet jingled faintly like little bells. Without a word Tiny caught her round the waist and swung her onto the floor. He yelled to the pianist:

‘Alois, thrash away, you pianos-puncher. Tiny’s going to crank up a whore.’

At the little tables in the niches the guests were snickering. The girls whinnied, gloating over the elegant lady who got herself into a scrape. They looked upon Wind Force 11 as their beat, exclusively theirs. All strange women to them were like rags to a bull.

A savage tune was struck up on the grand piano. The other guests stepped down from the little dance floor behind the curtain. Tiny geared up and rolled out on the floor. He braked with a jolt, slid sideways in small crow steps, stopped and howled, swung Lisa above his head and spun her around. Then he declutched and glided through the room in waltz time, with no regard whatever to the music. All at once he felt like an apache, flung his lady into a corner and spat on the floor. But he had her in his grip again directly – even before it had dawned on her that she’d just torn right through the room. He let out a loud roar and danced a solo round his partner, who had gradually gone half mad. Fists on hips, he circled about her in rocking motion like a rooster doing a mating dance, humming:

This will soon be over,

There’s an end to everything.

Alois, the pianist, forgot to play. Grabbing Lisa, Tiny flew past the grand piano at top speed, but he managed in passing to butt Alois in the face.

‘Get a move on, you shrimp, what do you imagine you’re here for?’

With exemplary zeal Alois started banging the keys. He beat out a spirited Hungarian waltz, Tiny meanwhile having switched over to a tango. Neither let himself be disturbed by the clashing rhythm. Paying no special attention to the music, Tiny did as he pleased, off and on twirling the helpless Lisa in the air like a propeller. She had lost a shoe. It was lying in the middle of the floor, blue and forlorn.

Lisa wasn’t dancing any more. Her legs had given way while they were doing a rhumba. Tiny continued dancing solo, meanwhile turning her around on his shoulders. Suddenly, he came to an abrupt halt and glowered round the room. ‘Is someone spoiling for a fight?’

No answer. He nodded, content. ‘I hope not, for your own sakes.’

The Legionnaire chuckled. ‘Come, put your lady on the counter.’

Puffing, Tiny chucked the semi-conscious Lisa onto the bar. He sat down beside her friend Gisela.

The Legionnaire looked at the panting woman in front of him on the counter.

‘Trude,’ he commanded for no apparent reason. ‘Madame needs a tonic.’

Another glass with a dash from Aunt Dora’s bottle.

Presently poor Lisa was again on her feet. She’d gotten drunk. Quite suddenly. Aunt Dora’s drops. She let herself go, forgetting all about her dignified arrogance. She danced with Bauer. She danced with Stein. She danced with an infantry sergeant.

The sergeant didn’t get to finish his dance. Tiny knocked him down and the Belgian threw him out in the back where others continued the transport further.

She danced once more with Tiny. She drank with the Legionnaire. She became very drunk. She threw her clothes into one of the small curtained-off rooms.

Aunt Dora’s subtle drops made people forget about regulations. An avalanche was in progress.

Lisa asked the Legionnaire if he’d bring her home.

‘You’re a slut,’ he said, and took another sip of vodka.

She cried a little bit. The Legionnaire didn’t pay attention to her any more. He told Aunt Dora that women who came to her dive to have an adventure were a bad lot. He told her about the women in Casablanca and Rabat. About women who loved and died. About men who were noiselessly murdered in a narrow passage between white houses. He related this jerkily, in a soft murmur.

Aunt Dora listened, her eyes screwed up. The smoke from her long cheroot bothered her.

Gisela attempted to leave. She’d suddenly been hit by an overwhelming desire for fresh air. The Belgian at the door – a revolving door – smiled amiably, but he shook his head. ‘You don’t leave a party this way, madame!’

He led her back to the bar.

A shrill laugh from Lisa struck the red lamps in the ceiling. She took another sip from her glass. Gisela didn’t drink. She was smoking, feeling very hot. She sat down beside me. I proposed we should take a trip upstairs together. I, too, had gotten a little drunk, and I felt like emulating the Legionnaire. I knew very well I didn’t behave nicely, but so what? Tomorrow we may die.

She shook her head and waggled her foot in a pink little shoe.

She must be rich, I thought.

‘Oh, go to hell,’ I said.

She pretended not to hear.

Tiny was yelling for whores. No one took any notice, because he was always doing that. He wanted to fight the doorman, who’d been a wrestler, but the Belgian had no desire to fight Tiny. One night they had fought. It lasted for more than an hour. When finally it was over, Tiny looked awful. The Belgian looked awful. Tiny told Dr Mahler he’d been run over by a carriage in the port. Dr Mahler pretended to believe him. One must pretend to believe many things when men from a penal regiment come to a big city with girls and schnapps after a long stay at the front. The grooms of death must live as they think they ought to. Death may come tomorrow.

Gisela vanished, but I had her handbag. Her identification card was in it, with her address. The Legionnaire carefully examined the contents. Then he returned the bag to me, after helping himself to a hundred marks.

Her name was something with ‘von’ and she lived on the Alster. So, she was rich!

‘She should be whipped,’ Ewald said. He licked his lips.

‘And you should have a bayonet in your belly,’ the Legionnaire smiled amiably.

Ewald was about to say something, but Aunt Dora removed the cheroot from her mouth and snarled a warning: ‘Shut your trap, you brute!’

Ewald said nothing. The Legionnaire hummed: ‘Come now, death, come!’

Ewald gave himself a shake as if he were cold. Aunt Dora felt nauseated by the cheroot and looked at the Legionnaire out of the corner of her eye. The scar from his knife wound, running from his temple to the edge of his collar, shone pale blue.

‘Oh, cut out that damn song,’ she whispered in her hoarse voice.

‘Scared of death, my girl? Death’s my friend.’

He laughed harshly and started playing with his battle knife.

Tiny startled. Making no attempt to cover up, he felt for his own knife, hidden in a secret pocket of his boot.

‘Would anyone care to be sliced up?’ he grinned, sticking his mouth out toward Ewald, who was eager to get away. A brutal punch tumbled him back against the bar.

‘You stay here,’ Tiny warned. ‘I might feel like making a few gashes in you. You’re a filthy bastard. Now, tell me what you are.’

Ewald let out a forced laugh. His small cunning eyes rolled in his head.

Tiny drove his knife in between Ewald’s fingers, but without giving him even a scratch.

‘What are you, you whoremaster?’

‘A filthy bastard,’ Ewald stammered, looking with glassy eyes at the quivering knife. Once this knife had belonged to a man from Siberia. The man had been kicked to death at Cherkassy for gouging out the eye of a lieutenant in the 104th Rifleman Regiment. Tiny had taken the knife from the leg of his boot. The knife had been made specially to slash the throats of other men. It was a good knife, and Tiny had learned to use it with amazing skill.

*

One time in the East we were going to reconnoiter at the far end of a bridge. It was an old and decayed bridge, because no one could be bothered to take care of it. Wood-and-iron bridges have to be taken care of to look nice.

We stepped briskly across the bridge. Our boots rang against the iron. The river grinned up toward us between the cross ties. It chuckled with suppressed laughter because it knew something we didn’t. It held a surprise for us.

As usual we were jabbering away. Tiny was walking at the very back. He was peeved because we had been without food for three days and because he was dead set on getting permission to rape one of the women rifle soldiers we had captured during the night.

‘She won’t give a twitter,’ he promised. ‘No one will know anything about it. A panty soldier like that, would it really matter?’

‘I’ll shoot you like a dog if you hurt any of those women,’ the Old Man threatened.

This was the reason Tiny walked across the bridge a little behind the rest of us. He kicked spitefully at a lump of clay, which enraged him by getting stuck on the toe of his boot. He kicked out several times, but the lump stuck. Red with rage he bent down, tore off the lump and hurled it far into the grinning river. By now he’d fallen even further behind. Morose, hateful and bloodthirsty, he slouched behind the patrol, which had vanished into the mist and was audible only as a pleasant buzz of murmured words.

Suddenly he stopped, gaping. Out of the fog, across the rail of the bridge, there emerged a figure, a lithe figure. With the nimbleness of a cat he glided after the patrol. Tiny speeded up. He seemed transformed. The gorilla had turned into a black panther. Both vanished in the fog.

A gurgling shriek cut through the clammy air and sent the patrol flying for cover. The buzz of their chattering had died away.

Groans and blows could be heard through the fog. Then footsteps clanked against the iron. We caught a firm hold on our sub-machine guns. The Old Man slit his eyes. The Legionnaire cocked his gun. Porta pulled the pin of an egg grenade. True to pattern when something special was up, Stege trembled slightly.