SS General (41 page)

They were young and well formed, with great pneumatic breasts bulging out of their skimpy bathing suits. Barcelona whooped, and Tiny gave a loud catcall.

"Holy Mother of God!" whimpered Gregor. "I'd almost forgotten what they looked like."

Porta went plunging off toward them, followed eagerly by the rest of us. Only the Old Man and the Legionnaire remained aloof and amused on the outskirts. The girls fluttered and screamed as Tiny's great paw groped at their bottoms, and Porta propositioned them outright with bottles of vodka as bait. They escaped from us and ran shrieking down to the sea, and a barrel-chested sergeant suddenly accosted us with a shout of rage.

"What the hell do you think this is?" he bellowed. "A cattle market? Keep your hands off my girls or I'll have you sent to Torgau!"

"Your
girls?" queried Porta eagerly. "You mean, you rent them out?"

"I mean they're two of my nurses!" he roared. "You keep your filthy hands to yourself! This is a respectable garrison, we don't have to put up with you people behaving like pigs the minute they let you out of the trenches!"

The Old Man stepped forward, looking the sergeant coldly up and down. The man's uniform was flamboyantly new and smart.

"Have you ever been to the front?" asked the Old Man quietly.

"Of course I haven't! I work in the infirmary. What do you take me for?"

Porta's "A fucking son of a bitch," was delivered in no uncertain voice.

The sergeant rounded on him. "All right! You've asked for it! You came here in search of trouble and by Christ you're going to get it!" He took out a notebook. "Name and number!" he snapped.

"Don't be a fool," said the Old Man. He pulled open his coat and revealed his rank of sergeant major, together with the various decorations he had gained during his years at the front. The sergeant swallowed rather resentfully.

"You want to watch your language in future," gibed Porta. "Might find yourself trying to bawl out a colonel one day."

"Shut up," said the Old Man.

"I don't see why I should," began Porta, aggrieved.

"Well, shut up anyway!"

The sergeant had recovered himself.

"You stick to the rules," he said, "and you'll enjoy yourselves in Zatoka. We got discipline, but we're democratic. If everyone behaves himself, we all get along fine. You're here for a rest, but you still got to have discipline. Like in a barracks. Law and order--you'll find a list of the rules pinned up in the bedrooms and the recreation rooms. And don't try tearing them down!"

He marched off chest first along the beach. Tiny and Porta disappeared into the town in search of girls.

Gregor pulled me to one side. "I don't know how you feel," he murmured, "but I rather fancy one of those nurses myself."

There was one small problem: how to get at them! It was against the rules for them to visit us in our bedrooms, and it went without saying that it was also against the rules for us to visit them in their bedrooms.

Their quarters were on the fourth floor of the adjoining house. It was impossible to use the front door, there were spies lurking in every corner. We slipped outside that night under cover of darkness and I climbed onto Gregor's shoulders and hauled myself onto the first-floor balcony, then gave Gregor a hand up. We looked apprehensively at the drainpipe.

"You think it'll take our weight?" I said.

"Try it and see," said Gregor. "If it takes you, it'll take me. You're heavier."

"That," I retorted, outraged, "is a palpable lie!"

"Oh, stop beefing!" he growled, giving me a shove toward the suspect drain pipe. "Either you want it or you don't, and this is the only way you're likely to get it!"

We reached the roof and clambered over the gutter, cold sweat breaking out between our shoulders. Far, far away below us lay the sea and the rocks. I stared down at them and shivered.

"It's a funny thing," I said, "but I can't stand heights. It's one of my weaknesses."

"And nurses are one of mine!" replied Gregor with a grin.

We crept along the roof to their room, then leaned over the edge of the gutter and threw pebbles at them through the open windows. They looked out and saw us, twisting their heads around, pulling faces and pretending to be shocked.

"We're coming down!" hissed Gregor.

They made no attempt to stop us. Indeed, their room was so tidy, so seductively arranged, so softly lit, that I was tempted to believe they had anticipated a visit.

"Look," said Gregor, suddenly stiff and foolish in their presence, "we've brought you something." And he thrust a large bottle of vodka and a tin of caviar at them, while I, equally maladroit, handed over my own contribution: a watch and a bracelet that I had stolen from Tiny, who in turn had stolen them from someone else. I was still waiting for him to discover his loss.

The girls received their gifts with little squeaks of glee. We all sat down together in the dim light and studied one another. The vodka was passed around; we ate the caviar and some ground meat and red cabbage. The girls giggled a great deal and eyed us up and down, trying to assess our likely performances. One of them was big and blond, the other was small and dark. Truth to tell, I was scared stiff of both of them!

The brunette finally attached herself to me, supping onto my knee and putting an arm around my neck as we sipped our vodka. I felt myself beginning to sweat. I wondered why on earth I had come. It was worse than waiting in the trenches for the enemy to launch an attack--it was so long since I had had a woman. Suppose I made a fool of myself? She would be insulted and I would be humiliated. And the word would spread around the company and my life wouldn't be worth living. I should never have come. Let Gregor have both of them. He was welcome.

The girl rubbed her face close against mine. Her lips, half open, brushed across my mouth. A moment later she was all but devouring me. I stopped feeling scared and began to feel cautiously excited. I let an exploratory hand crawl spiderlike up her leg, and she wriggled with pleasure. I began to grow bolder.

Gregor was more forward than me. He had already taken possession of the blonde and laid her out flat on one of the beds. A pair of pants came flapping across the room like a frightened pigeon, followed by a stocking. The blonde giggled rather shrilly but made no attempt at resistance.

I found myself being pushed backward, off the chair and onto the bed. The girl launched herself after me, lying on top of me, her lips nuzzling the base of my neck.

"What's your name?" she murmured. "Mine's Gertrude."

"I'm Sven."

"German?"

"Danish."

"Ah! Danish!" I felt her fingers plucking at me, slowly removing my clothes. "I've been married twice," she informed me chattily. "My first husband was killed in Poland and the other worked at the local command post. The English blew it up. The whole road was gone within ten minutes. Incendiary bombs," she explained.

"Oh, yes?"

I was not interested in the English and their incendiary bombs. My temperature had rocketed so high I felt quite dizzy. I pulled her close, and she wound her legs tight about me.

"It's been such a long time," she whispered.

"Me too," I said.

We were silent a while.

"Have you had many women?" she asked.

"I don't know--how can I remember?"

"How can you forget?" she chided.

"It was all so long ago--we've just come from Stalingrad. I can't remember all the things that happened to me before that."

"Stalingrad!" She gave an ecstatic shudder and pressed herself even harder against me. "That must have been terrible."

"A bit grim," I agreed, and began sweating profusely.

"It's a wonder a man can live through it."

"Don't worry," I murmured, "this makes up for it all."

And it did, at the time. We spent the whole night making love. We passed through the Kama Sutra from cover to cover and were ready to begin all over again with the dawn. But time was up, and Gregor and I had to make our way back across the rooftops.

"Watch how you go!" said the girls, hanging out of the window and giggling. "It won't be as easy as when you came!"

As we slipped unsteadily down the drainpipe to the first-floor balcony, we saw two dim figures galloping homeward with bottles tucked under their arms. Tiny and Porta.

"Where have they been?" I demanded.

"Dunno," said Gregor, "but they're breaking the rules: no drink allowed on the premises . . ."

"No sex allowed on the premises," I said owlishly.

Gregor and I sniggered happily as we clambered over the balcony.

For four days we continued to play in the antechamber to paradise. Each night Gregor and I mountaineered across the rooftops and each morning we stumbled back again, exhausted. We were drunk with the freshly discovered delights of sex, and perhaps it was as well that we were called back to the front before the pleasure began to grow stale.

The Legionnaire looked at us and laughed softly to himself. "You look worse than when you came," he remarked.

"A change is as good as a rest," said Gregor, with all the solemnity of one who is expounding an original theory.

"Just as well!" retorted the Legionnaire. "You two haven't had a moment's rest since you arrived! On the job morning noon and night."

We traveled back in a train that was full of horses. We stretched out in the feeding troughs that were fixed to the walls, and Gregor and I fell asleep almost immediately. But this time we were awakened not by soft lips and gentle caresses, but by the insistent nuzzling of the horses and the hot blowing of their sweet, hay-smelling breath on our cheeks. We and the poor beasts were going back together to the miseries of war.

We shall be ruthless in our fight against the opponents of the Confederation of the German Peoples. All those who cannot integrate into our society must be exterminated, regardless of race or religion.

General Goering, in a talk given to the police, December 12, 1934

A section of blood-spattered T-34s nosed their way slowly down the center of the road, between the serried ranks of corpses which lined the sidewalks and even spilled over into the gutters. In the leading tank, Lieutenant Yevtenko gazed with complete indifference at the gaunt gray shadows that came crawling out of the sewers and the cellars, out of the ruins and the bomb craters. They were men, these furtive shadows; starving, withered and broken. But to Lieutenant Yevtenko they were merely the scum of a defeated army.

A German colonel suddenly ran into the road and flung wide his arms. "Heil Hitler!" he shouted, as Lieutenant Yevtenko's tank approached him; and, "Heil Hitler!" he cried, as it crushed him beneath its tracks.

The colonel had lost his mind. Many men had lost their minds at Stalingrad. Among them was General Lange who, at the last moment, as the victorious Russians marched back to claim their property, seized hold of a machine gun and turned on his own men. He killed several hundred before he ran out of ammunition.

Behind the column of T-34s came a low black car. It hooted impatiently as it forced its way through the groups of soldiers now gathering increasingly in the street. It gradually moved up the column and overtook the leading tank. Inside, reclining in the back seat, were two generals. One was in khaki. This was General Polkovnik, a Russian staff officer. The other was in gray, with scarlet lapels and a baton in his hand. This was the newly promoted Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus. He glanced now and again through the windows, staring unseeing at the ragged soldiers standing about uncertainly awaiting their fate at the hands of the Russians. Prison camp, or maybe worse. Field Marshal Paulus smiled at a comment of General Polkovnik's, and the two men laughed together. Paulus never once referred to his starving troops; he never once made mention of the 285,000 corpses that lay scattered over the steppe, or the 10,000 execution orders which he himself had signed during the last forty-eight days of the battle for Stalingrad. All that was over and done with. He could look out of the window at the gray-faced men and be unmoved by their suffering. The battle was over, they were no longer his concern.

Meanwhile, one of his generals was caught trying to steal a hunk of horsemeat from a wounded lieutenant and was battered almost to death for his pains. Yelling and raving, he was dragged away by three Russian officers and thrown into a prison camp in one of the Red Army buildings. Not every general could be promoted to field marshal and be driven through the streets of Stalingrad in a big black car.

Down in a cellar, beneath the blackened ruins of a factory, a field hospital had been set up. And in one corner of the cellar crouched a small group of men from the 44th Mot Division. They were gnawing at things that came out of a bucket. The bucket had been taken from the operating theater, and the things they were eating were amputated limbs. It was the first square meal they had had for more than three months.

Executions

The truck turned in at the prison gates and we were enveloped in a great cloud of choking dust blown up by the wind. As it slowly cleared, we were able to look about us and see what kind of place they had sent us to.

The central prison at Kharkov was something of a showpiece. We were connoisseurs of prisons, and we recognized a bit of quality when we saw it! At Kharkov, all the buildings were painted an ostentatious white for purity. They were scrubbed clean and shining with virtue, and were as yet unmarked by graffiti. They were laid out in the shape of a star, and the whole prison did its best to look like public pleasure gardens.

In the. courtyard of Block 4 it was exercise time, and the prisoners were running in circles with their hands anxiously holding up their trousers. No belts or suspenders are allowed in military prisons; governors live in perpetual terror lest some cunning fiend in a condemned cell should manage to hang himself before the firing squad can get at him.

The truck came to a halt and we reluctantly jumped out. We had not been told why we were here, but we knew without being told. Twelve men in battle dress; twelve rifles and twenty-five bullets per man--we knew what it meant. We had all of us been through it before. We were the firing squad, come to murder some poor bastard.