The Cross of Iron (41 page)

Second Company’s bunkers were dug deep into the walls of the trench at intervals of seventy-five to a hundred feet. The men who were not on duty lay dozing on the hard plank beds. Steiner was with them again. The previous week he had rejoined the battalion. Immediately after his arrival Fetscher had called him in for a long talk and had gravely warned him that he would be better off accepting the regimental commander’s offer and transferring immediately to the headquarters staff. Shaken though he was by the news of Dorn’s death, Steiner had flatly rejected the sergeant’s well-meant advice. It would take more than a dozen Stranskys to make him leave the company, he had said.

The reunion with the men of the platoon had been subdued and rather grave. Schnurrbart and Krüger were already wearing their corporal’s insignia and received his congratulations with somewhat dreary smiles. ‘What good does this nonsense do me,’ Krüger said bitterly, ‘if a month from now none of the bastards I always wanted to order around are left.’ They had not yet got over the deaths of Anselm and Dorn. Steiner, too, was soon affected by their mood, which only deepened the depression he would feel whenever he reflected upon Gertrud’s strange evasiveness. But luckily he had little time to think too much about that. He had redivided the groups and was devoting most of his energy to training the new replacements who had been brought in only a few days before. He instructed them in the possibilities and perils of positional warfare and sketched for them the probable phases of the impending battle, so that they would not lose their heads when the time came.

His thoughts were with them now as he sat at the table in his bunker, absently watching Faber conscientiously divide up his meagre piece of sausage. Faber’s big, earnest face with its vigorous nose, cleft chin and thin lips was concentrated upon his task; he held the knife poised as though picking the next spot on a tree before swinging his axe. His eyes were a deep lake-blue. Faber’s transfer from the 3rd to the 2nd Company had been accomplished only over Lieutenant Gausser’s resistance. Gausser had been unwilling to release his reliable machine-gunner, and it had taken all of Meyer’s persuasiveness to move him. Later Meyer had told Steiner that next time he wanted a man, he’d better go out and capture one from the Russian lines. But the transfer had gone through at last and Faber was now machine-gunner in the 2nd Platoon.

Five men were lying on the cots in the bunker, snoring loudly. Of the five, Kern was the only former member of the platoon. Maag and Pasternack were assigned to Krüger’s group in the next bunker; Hollerbach and Schnurrbart shared the next but one bunker with four replacements. Although the platoon now numbered over thirty rifles, the ‘old boys’ had not been particularly enthusiastic about the reinforcements because it meant that the regulars were split up. Hollerbach had been emphatic about sticking together with Maag and Pasternack, but Steiner had pointed out that it would not be fair to the new men to leave them without front-line veterans. In any case, Krüger had remarked sarcastically, within another two weeks it would be possible to stow the whole battalion away in a single bunker.

The Black Forester had meanwhile finished his meal. He wiped his fatty fingers on his trousers. Looking up, he caught Steiner thoughtfully regarding the men on the cots. ‘Not much to them,’ he remarked laconically.

Steiner, startled out of his thoughts, looked up distractedly. Then he nodded. ‘I know, but what can we expect? Those infants have picked a bad time to come out to the front. Four weeks training and right smack into the soup. I’m afraid we’re going to have trouble with them.’

‘So am I,’ Faber said. ‘Even a tree must learn to bow at the right time. If it doesn’t, it breaks in the first storm.’

Steiner grinned. ‘Do you always talk in terms in trees?’ 

‘Almost always,’ Faber replied quietly.

Steiner took out his cigarettes and held them across the table. ‘Do you smoke?’

‘No.’

‘Oh, well,’ Steiner said, shrugging and lighting a cigarette.

He had talked with Faber several times and knew that his parents owned a small farm near St. Blasien. But the woodsman was so taciturn that he had not found out very much more. Only once had Faber dropped his reserve somewhat. They had been talking about trees, which was the one subject Faber really seemed to know and care about. Thinking of this, Steiner took up the conversation again. ‘I’ve never been one to hear the grass growing, and as for your trees, all I know about them is that they look pretty and are useful for lumber. I guess I can stand learning a bit more about them.’

Faber’s face remained expressionless. He laid his big hands on the table and said: ‘When it comes to trees, a person can always learn a little more about them. Back home in our valley there was a man who wanted to know how many trees there were in the forest. He wanted to know exactly, and he counted them.’ ‘Counted the trees?’ Steiner exclaimed incredulously.

‘Yes. He took a brush and a pot of white paint and went into the woods. Every tree he counted he marked with a white cross.’

‘He was insane.’

Faber shook his head. ‘He was living on a pension and was sixty-five years old when he started his work. For over fifteen years he walked in the woods painting his crosses on every tree.’

‘He should have been put in a lunatic asylum,’ Steiner said, somehow angered.

‘That’s what some people said,’ Faber continued, ‘but he had influential friends who saw to it that he was let alone; he had been a university professor and a famous astronomer. When people tried to persuade him to stop his senseless work he only smiled and said he had spent his whole life investigating the stars but didn’t know how many trees there were in the forest.’

‘The story is pointless,’ Steiner said. ‘That was a fellow who stared up at the sky so long he lost touch with the ground under his feet. What became of him?’

‘He died a few years ago.’

‘Best thing he could do. How many trees did he count in those fifteen years?’

‘He kept that to himself. But one day he came home and said that now he knew exactly how many there were. The trees told him, he said. He passed on not long afterwards.’

‘Peace to his ashes,’ Steiner said. ‘I suppose we ought to feel sorry for a fellow like that. I hope to spend the last fifteen years of my life more profitably. When I get to the point where I hear the trees talking, I’ll drink a bottle of nitroglycerin and jump off the Jungfrau. But seriously, do you believe any of that?’

Faber stood up slowly. ‘The peasants where I live have their work and they have their beliefs,’ he said quietly. ‘They know the trees have their own language and they believe what the trees tell them, because what the trees have to say is sure and steady and our peasants are like the trees.’

Steiner wrinkled his brow. ‘Sounds to me that you’re saying something about us—I mean, about us city people.’

The ghost of a smile passed over Faber’s grave face. ‘You are the leaves on the trees.’

‘Are we?’ Steiner studied him suspiciously. ‘Well, that’s something; what would a tree be without leaves!’

‘A tree without leaves is still a tree,’ Faber said. ‘But a leaf without a tree is a withered nothing, and the leaf always dies before the tree.’ He left the bunker.

Maag and Pasternack were in the MG emplacement, sitting on empty ammunition boxes and peering through the loophole at the woods. It was warm and they had taken off their tunics. At regular intervals they heard the dull explosion of heavy mortars firing. Plop, plop, plop. It sounded like the hammering of a woodpecker. The shells landed somewhere on the hill at the back of them. Pasternack sighed. ‘I wonder how long this war is going on?’

Maag twisted his freckled face into a grimace and spat on the floor. ‘Until final victory,’ he declared pompously. ‘One of these days we’ll turn the tide, all right.’

‘I can’t believe that any longer.’

‘Neither can I,’ Maag said. ‘But what the hell, who cares? The cart is stuck in the mud and that’s all that matters.’

Pasternack shrugged impatiently. ‘That’s ridiculous,’ he replied crossly.

‘It isn’t ridiculous,’ Maag retorted. ‘It’s better for it to be stuck in the mud than to go on rolling over the cliff. But that’s politics and I’m sick of it.’ He spat again. Then, seeing Maag’s troubled expression, he clapped him reassuringly on the shoulder. ‘We’ll get through one way or another. I just want to live through this war; that’s all I care about. As long as the cart stays in the mud, I’ll stick with it; when it starts rolling again, I’m jumping off.’

‘A good way to break your neck.’

‘True enough, but I’ll jump carefully, you can depend on that.’ 

Several shells landed close in front of them. They flattened out on the floor. Acrid black smoke entered through the loophole. When the vision cleared, Maag got up, groaning, and looked at the crater. ‘Those stinking mortars,’ he growled. ‘Another ten feet and it would have made our bones rattle.’ He turned to Pasternack with a sudden thought. ‘Maybe those women from the bridge are firing at us now. I said right off we should have killed them.’ 

Pasternack pounded the dust from his clothes. ‘What would have been the use? They have plenty of replacements. Women are women, in or out of uniform.’

Before Maag could reply, Schnurrbart appeared. Maag grinned at him. ‘What’s new, Corporal?’

Schnurrbart drew an ammunition box up for a seat. ‘If you say corporal again, I’ll throw you out of the trench.’ He filled his pipe and voluptuously puffed smoke at the ceiling. ‘What could possibly be new?’ he said at last. ‘You know already that we’re losing the war.’ Maag dug the tip of his boot into the sand. ‘There’s no proof of that,’ he said ill-humouredly.

‘Any map proves it,’ Schnurrbart replied.

They sat in silence for a while, looking out through the loophole. At last Maag cursed. ‘So what? Any army can retreat. So maybe the others will win the war, but it’s nothing to boast of. Dozens against one country. Our allies don’t count. Except for the Japs, they’re good for nothing.’ He was hit by sudden fury. ‘Today they shake hands with you, all smiles, and next day they kick you in the behind. The devil take them,’

‘Who?’

They turned their heads and saw Krüger, who had come up quietly and was now standing, head ducked, in the entrance.

‘All of them and you too,’ Maag growled.

Krüger threw out his chest. ‘You are talking to your superior officer.’

‘In that case come over here and kiss my arse.’

Krüger’s face flushed. ‘One of these days somebody’s going to let out a howl,’ he threatened.

Schnurrbart raised his hand. ‘Cut the bickering,’ he said mildly. His glance fell upon an earthworm that was wriggling across the floor. ‘Learn from this lowly creature,’ he said with mock solemnity. ‘It lies in slime all the time and yet it doesn’t grumble about it.’ 

They all stared at the worm, and Maag shook his head in aversion. ‘Disgusting things,’ he said. ‘I wonder what they exist for.’

Krüger studied the worm thoughtfully. ‘Still and all,’ he commented deliberately. ‘If you cut off its head, the rest of the body goes on living.’

‘Too bad that isn’t the case with a certain type of corporal,’ Schnurrbart observed.

Maag chuckled, and Krüger glared at him. Then he turned to Schnurrbart and said frostily: ‘You might refrain from such remarks in the presence of the men.’

Schnurrbart swallowed the wrong way and coughed, while the others regarded Krüger’s flushed face half in astonishment, half in amusement. Krüger paid no attention to them. He stepped forward quickly, crushed the worm under his heavy boot and turned toward the entrance. ‘One of these days you’ll find yourself thinking of me,’ he said.

Schnurrbart nodded. ‘Often as you like—in the latrine.’ 

Krüger made off. Maag turned to Schnurrbart. ‘What’s eating him? He was only joking, wasn’t he?’

‘Certainly,’ Schnurrbart said, looking down at the crushed worm, which was still twitching. He stood up. ‘Everything’s a joke,’ he declared, and also went out.

Maag shrugged. ‘They’ve got trench fever,’ he said angrily. ‘They can stick it up.’

Pasternack said nothing. He was thinking of home in Breslau, and everything suddenly seemed much harder and far more hopeless.

In the evening they sat around in their bunkers. Steiner lay on his bunk without interest turning the pages of his volume of Eichendorff. He felt an uneasiness he could not explain. Faber was sitting at the table writing a letter. His big, hairy paws covered most of the sheet of paper; now and then he would stare absently into the candlelight for a while, then carefully set down a few more words. Beside him, using the other half of the table, Kern and two of the other men were playing cards and exchanging comments in murmurs. For a while Steiner watched their faces. Then he decided to look in on the other bunkers. He stood up. At that moment the door was opened and the broad face of the company commander appeared. As the men started to rise, he waved his hand. ‘Don’t let me disturb you.’ He turned to Steiner. ‘You can accompany me through the positions.’ His voice sounded so impersonal that Steiner was taken aback. Without a word he picked up his tommy-gun and went out behind Meyer.

The night was warm and still. They inspected the MG and sniper positions. Meyer remained uncommunicative; he received the sentries’ reports without his usual word or two of encouragement. When they reached the right wing of the company’s sector, he turned about and started back. Abruptly he stopped and looked over the top of the trench. ‘If the Russians keep pushing their trench in the direction they’ve been doing, they will land just about here,’ he said.

Steiner nodded. He had known for two days that the Russians were working hard on an assault trench leading from the edge of the woods across the open field straight toward 2nd Company’s positions. ‘When they get close enough,’ he answered offhandedly, ‘we’ll pay them a visit. But they won’t be finished before the day after tomorrow.’

‘Let’s hope so,’ Meyer said. He took a step back, and Steiner felt that the company commander was scrutinizing him. Meyer’s odd behaviour was beginning to get on his nerves and he was on the point of asking what it was all about when Meyer himself spoke. ‘A nasty business,’ he said uncertainly. ‘I ran into Triebig this afternoon. He says you were degraded a year ago. Is that true?’