Comrades of War (12 page)

We played for about a half hour or so. Gerhard Stief won a couple of hundred marks. We made him win. He pretended not to notice.

‘You sure are a tough one, Gerhard,’ Porta laughed. ‘You’re giving us all a beating.’

In order that all fourteen could participate we switched over to banker. Whenever Gerhard turned up the right card our enthusiasm knew no bounds.

‘Hell, Gerhard, you’ll be a rich man. Maybe you’ll get to be our boss when we’re no longer busy with this war,’ Brandt said.

‘Yes, but let’s make sure not to forget that our revolution has to be settled before we close up shop and go home,’ Porta warned. He blew his nose on his fingers. A lump of snot hit a panel, where several other lumps testified to the diligent use of fingers for handkerchiefs.

Brandt shoved the bottle across to Gerhard. ‘Have another swig, Herr Lieutenant.’

Gerhard drank and put the bottle away, as we did, with a resolute thump. This thump was very important. It showed you were on easy terms with the bottle. You shouldn’t just
set
down a bottle, as a housewife does after she’s poured out a few drops of vinegar on the headcheese. You plunk down the bottle, as if saying: ‘Look, that’s where you stand, Comrade Green! Damn it all, you and I can boast of a few things neither God nor the Devil knows.’ A servant girl places a bottle. The snotnoses who want to show off pound the bottle on the table, whereas men from the port and the front, from the large trucks and the factories, put the bottle down with precisely this thump, which signifies that they come from the shipyard with its plates and steel. It stamps them as adults. These are the sort who grin at what others gape at, and the bottle says: ‘Hello, you old sot!’

Unteroffizier
Heide had again got back on his feet. Brassy and provocative, he squeezed himself between Krause and Gerhard. For a moment the situation was explosive. Calls and yells. After a string of scorching curses, Heide was seated beside Gerhard, in the place Krause had occupied. He grinned, drank a couple of glasses of schnapps and clicked his tongue: ‘Cards for Julius Heide!’ He looked sideways at Gerhard. ‘Let’s clean out those stinkers!’

Gerhard nodded. We played in silence. Gerhard won all the time. Heide acted offended. ‘You lucky swine,’ he cried. ‘Now I’ll soon be on my ass. If this goes on for long I’ll be settling down as a gigolo when the war’s over.’

‘That certainly wouldn’t be much of a change,’ Porta observed casually. ‘You were one already before the war.’

Heide said with resignation, ‘Broke!’

Gerhard laughed quietly.

‘You may have credit from me.’

‘How many per cent?’ Heide sneered.

‘At the rate charged by sixty-percenters when the party in question is a shady character,’ the Legionnaire decided on Gerhard’s behalf.

‘That’ll be 250 per cent,’ Porta yelled, slamming the ace of spades on the table.

Porta took the whole pot. Three hundred and seventy marks and four opium sticks.

All together we pounced on Porta’s ace of spades and examined it thoroughly. Quite obviously he had cheated.

Heide and Brandt borrowed on sixty-percenters’ terms.

‘You’re smart,’ the Legionnaire scoffed. Pulling his nose, he scowled at Porta, who’d sat down on top of all his money.

‘And you’ll be gracious enough to shut your trap, Desert Rambler,’ Porta threatened. Again he hauled in large winnings. He lent them to Krause at 275 per cent. To invest them in Krause was a very poor use of the money, as he was an SS man and sentenced for cowardice. Two different camps had it in for him, and fate could catch up with him at any moment.

‘We’ll arrange a first-rate cock-fight in Hamburg,’ Bauer cried excitedly, ‘and you’ll be our boss, Lieutenant.’

‘Yeah, we’ll rent
Planten en Blomen
,’ Stege laughed.

‘Christ, what a cock-fight we can put on there,’ Tiny roared. In his mind’s eye he saw the cocks killing each other – while we were cheating the players.

Outside, a big round moon was shining. It seemed to laugh at us, at all fourteen candidates for the grave.

The Legionnaire swept the cards off the table and kicked over his chair.

‘I’m bored. Let’s have a fight instead!’

In a moment everything had been prepared. Tiny and Heide were going to have a boxing match. Braids from sofas and chairs were twined together to mark the ring. The two husky fellows stood there ready, dressed in underpants and infantry boots. Dressing rolls were used for hand bandages. We didn’t have any boxing gloves.

‘I’ll batter you to snot!’ Tiny said, getting worked up.

‘I’ll kick you in your belfry,’ Heide cried.

‘It’ll be a good fight,’ Porta vowed.

The Legionnaire nodded.

Tiny grinned and began swinging his arms. ‘Jesus, how I’m looking forward to knocking you cold.’

The Legionnaire held him back.

‘No punches till I give the word. And you’ll go on punching till one of you’s KOd.’

‘Quite right,’ Tiny cried. He was stalking noisily about the room in his infantry boots.

Heide slit his eyes and looked angrily at Tiny.

‘Remember, you bastard, I’m city champion! You’re going to whimper!’

The Legionnaire pounded on an empty gas-mask container with a hand grenade, the signal to begin the fight.

The two boxers jumped up and started stalking and dancing around each other. They both acted professional, but we knew from experience that the professional bit would soon wear off. As soon as one of them should happen to hit a bit hard, a regular fight with all the meanest street-fight tricks would develop. This was what we were looking forward to.

Throughout, Heide went after Tiny with his chin resting on his chest. He resembled a young bull set on chasing all other bulls to the ends of the earth.

Tiny walked backward and growled like a polar bear threatened with being deprived of his piece of meat. Both men were constantly muttering curses at each other.

All of a sudden Heide raised his right and planted it three or four times in Tiny’s face. Tiny’s head flew back like a coiled spring. He yelled from rage and frantically lashed out with both fists, but without hitting the grinning Heide, who evaded every murderous blow. He was excellent at defense and knew the art of keeping his guard up.

After three rounds Tiny’s face was badly decorated. Heide became presumptuous. After the tenth round he hammered a left against Tiny’s ribs. A blood-red stain appeared.

Tiny snorted up blood and roared balefully.

‘Now Tiny’s mad,’ Stege yelled joyously. ‘If he catches Julius he’ll kill him.’

‘It beats all the bullfights in Spain,’ came the Legionnaire’s fascinated whisper, as Heide’s iron fist landed with a hollow smack in Tiny’s stomach, making him gasp for breath.

‘At him, Tiny!’ Porta cried. ‘He said he can beat you as easily as a little Harlem bitch!’

Tiny stopped and glowered at Porta.

‘Did that pig say that?’

Porta nodded with a grin. ‘Oh yes, and more.’

Heide seized his chance at once and drummed away at Tiny’s diaphragm. At the same time he kicked him in the wrist.

Tiny bellowed with pain and boiling rage. He lowered his head like a ram and charged forward. With his speed he flung the Legionnaire out of the ring, tore the ropes to bits and hurled a stool after Heide, who’d leaped for cover behind us.

From deep within Tiny came strange animal sounds. He was almost totally blind, since the flesh around his eyes had swelled up terrifically. Heide kicked him in the stomach and butted him in the face – the Danish kiss.

They rushed in circles after each other. Heide jerked his left shoulder and hit Tiny a stinging blow across the neck. It brought him to his knees.

Like a weasel Heide was upon him. They bit, snarled, kicked, and spat. Then both of them were again on their feet. After all the thrusts and hits Heide had managed to place, Tiny’s face was twice its normal size.

‘My knife,’ Tiny yelled. ‘Get me my knife.’

He searched for it blindly. Heide gave him a kick that sent him smack on his face. For one second Heide forgot to look out. That second decided Heide’s fate in this as in countless earlier fights. Tiny got hold of his ankle, got up roaring like a sick gorilla, seized both of Heide’s kicking legs and pounded his head against the floor till he hung in his fists like a sour dishcloth. Then he threw the limp body into a corner, cashed in his prize for the scuffle, slumped down and slept.

In a little while the rest of us also went to sleep, huddled together like puppies in a cold stable.

Outside, the moon, suspended, shone down among naked frozen trees. The ominous stillness of the mountains fell upon fourteen candidates for the grave, in a cabin where formerly merry tourists had rested after skiing.

Tiny was the first to see them. They were walking in single file. They strode quickly down the mountain, where a fallen rock lay like a natural gate.

Tiny’s grunting brought us all out. We were cold. They outnumbered us by far. They had flame-throwers, three heavy machine guns and one of the new stovepipes.

The sun, which had just given the mountain a good morning kiss, flashed with inexplicable cheerfulness on their silver death’s heads.

Through the Old Man’s field glasses we could see that an SS
Oberstumführer
led the way. Stege was probably right thinking it was a full company.

‘That guy in front looks like a bloodhound with a cold,’ the Legionnaire said and spat out beyond the stone curb.

The Old Man lowered his field glasses. Without looking round, he whispered hoarsely: ‘Get Gerhard out of the way!’

‘Where?’ asked Gerhard Stief, who was standing in the door looking over Porta’s shoulder.

Yes, where? We looked at each other in despair. Where?

Tiny and Heide turned their bruised faces toward the sun and blinked their eyes. It was an evil morning.

High up there on the narrow path someone stumbled. We could faintly hear him being bawled out by an SS
Oberscharführer
who was swinging a sub-machine gun and rushing around the company like a sheep dog.

‘That guy up there is a crap-pile,’ Heide grunted, feeling his swollen eye.

‘Let’s set up our light machine gun and plug the whole pack,’ Porta grinned, curling his narrow lips to a snarl like a dog ready to snap.

‘A great idea, and afterward we’ll cut their throats!’ Tiny suggested, flinging his long Siberian knife into the air. It twinkled as it twirled about and then ended up in his fist again, as if a rubber band had been attached to it.

‘Shut up, you fatheads,’ the Old Man exclaimed, annoyed. ‘If we start shooting we’re through. It’s twenty to one. We have to deceive them.’

‘You don’t believe that yourself,’ Stege mumbled. ‘They’ll knock us cold as soon as they notice the remnants of our big feast and find Gerhard. There will be fourteen “pops” and then the damned ravens will again have something to feed on.’

‘Right, Hugo,’ the Legionnaire nodded. ‘And that guy, the
O-Scharführer
, will have the job of pickling us!’

He pointed up at the tall fellow, who was again bawling out one of the SS riflemen.

The SS company disappeared slowly behind some spruces. In about a quarter of an hour they would emerge on the other side, and then they would soon be upon us.

They emerged like a bombshell. Stege started chewing and cocking his tommy gun.

The Old Man raised his eyebrow and signaled a warning to us. Tiny stood shifting his feet.

The weapons of the SS company clanked harshly, like the instruments of a sailor’s dentist just before he extracts the tooth of a stoker in filthy donkeyman’s trousers and torn tropical undershirt.

Krause, the SS man who was with us because of cowardice, gave a hollow cough. ‘Let’s get out of here!’

‘Afraid of your brothers?’ Porta inquired sweetly.

The SS man winced nervously and didn’t answer. The Legionnaire whistled. ‘
Mon Dieu
, now we’re going to see something.’

The SS
Obersturmführer
at the head stepped along briskly. His sleeves were rolled up, making the thick black hair on his arms visible.

We had a foreboding of death. Our nostrils dilated as on game flushed by far away beaters.

Gerhard walked into the house. Tiny and Bauer went along.

They were sweating when they reached us, with the SS
Obersturmführer
in front. They were all very young. Fine fellows in good condition.

‘Company, halt! Order arms! Left turn! Stand at ease!’

The command was cold and slick, like the rest of the morning.

The Old Man blinked at the SS officer with the death’s head cap and the long black hair on his arms. Their eyes met. The Old Man walked slowly across the fabulously green grass. The grass the old Jew loved so much.

The little Legionnaire slouched behind. As if accidentally, he swung his sub-machine gun into firing position and slipped for cover behind the stack of firewood.

Porta sneaked into the house. In the little barred window behind the rafters one suspected the presence of a blackish blue muzzle. The Old Man was covered by the two best killers on the front.

The SS officer hitched up his wide belt, weighed down by his Mauser.

Plates and bottles clattered in the house. The SS men craned their necks. The bottles made such a pleasant, familiar sound.

The report which the Old Man delivered was short and non-cooperative. He gave patrol and unit. Thirteen men, not counting the zebra man. He understood the false communication by declaring in an exceptionally loud voice: ‘Nothing particular to report!’

Glasses and plates clattered again as if protesting against the Old Man’s report. They seemed to be calling: ‘Come inside, SS
Obersturmführer
, and you’ll have a surprise!’

The slim SS officer gazed with raised eyebrows at the open door. He walked towards the house with slow steps, uncannily slow. His new high boots and leather things creaked loudly. He stopped for a while at the chopping-block, picked up the axe and cut a heavy stick in two with one stroke. That axe had been ground by an expert. He kicked at the split stick and laughed gently. His face became hard. He turned to the Old Man.