Comrades of War (21 page)

‘You’re a pig,’ the sergeant babbled and staggered into a nook where he was received by a couple of girls.

Trude handed the policeman a towel. He rubbed his whole head with it.

‘What a monkey! You know he really took a rap at me!’

The seaman again put his hand under the lady’s close-fitting skirt. ‘I’ll just tickle her a bit, then you’ll see how she revives,’ he grinned.

‘How do her bloomers look?’ cried the sergeant with the game license.

With a twitch the sailor pulled off her skirt. ‘They’re pink,’ he shouted with joy, displaying the lady’s backside in tight panties. He gave her a smack. ‘Wake up, now. Tomorrow I pull out to sea, it’ll be my last trip. Heinz won’t come to Hamburg any more!’

Another crashing bomb row. Glass clattered down from the shelves. The lights went out. A girl screamed. The sergeant started singing:

Denn wir fahren

seit vielen Jahren

mit grauen Haaren

gegen Engel-land . . .

‘Let’s have some light,’ called a man way down at the other end.

‘And some beer,’ another called.

‘I’ll sock you one,’ the sergeant shouted.

The policeman’s helmet had rolled into a corner when the bombs were coming down.

The sailor kissed the lady. He grinned happily.

‘Take her now,’ the sergeant cried. ‘Damn it all, man, show us what you can do!’

‘You’re right, pal. It’s about time,’ the sailor muttered. ‘It’s my last journey.’ He cursed. Something wasn’t going right. ‘You pig, now you’ll get to know the Navy!’

‘Bravo, sailor. Go ahead and torpedo her, then throw her out to the beggar.’

The lady let out a scream. A scream and a moan.

The Legionnaire laughed. Aunt Dora laughed.

‘A round of beers for the wedding party,’ someone called.

All of us laughed and drank to the sailor and the lady.

‘Can’t you behave yourself, you bitch,’ the sailor’s voice came from the darkness. ‘It’s my last passage out. By tomorrow night U-189 will have gone down.’

Trude brought a candle. By its flickering light we could see something dark lying on the floor.

Someone started playing the piano. The woman broke out in a long and ringing scream. The policeman yelled: ‘You son of a bitch! Leave the lady alone!’

‘Shove it, you beat-pounder,’ the sailor answered. ‘This is my last chance.’

Aunt Dora got up. Noiselessly and confidently she felt her way through the darkness.

The music struck up a tune:

This will soon be over,

There’s an end to everything.

Adolf and his Party

Will together sink.

‘Quiet,’ roared the policeman, who by now was frantic. A beam of light swept the floor and moved in on the sailor and the woman. Cursing, the policeman bent grimly over the sailor and separated them. The sailor laid about him savagely, broke loose and roared insanely. He stormed towards the door. The Belgian was swept aside.

‘Halt!’ the policeman called after him. ‘Halt or I’ll shoot!’ He cocked his weapon.

The sailor staggered up the basement stairs. There was a smacking of fire picks. Liquid spread out on the asphalt. Fire kindled. Blinding flames shot up. There was a glare as from a blast furnace. Calls for sand were heard. The shadows lengthened. There was nothing except a glaring, bright pale yellow. The street was on fire. All Bremerreihe was on fire.

Aunt Dora lit a white cheroot, the twentieth since the air attack. The Legionnaire hummed:
Come now, death, come!

The sailor, the U-boat man, was on fire: Slowly he melted down to a tiny mummy. A scorched, singed doll.

The woman he had raped before his last journey sat on the floor staring blindly ahead of her. She rocked from side to side. A long muffled scream escaped her. She began pounding her head against the wall. Faster and faster, like an accelerating train.

The sergeant with the game license laughed.

Aunt Dora slapped the woman with the back of her hand. Four times she did it, and very hard. The woman quieted down.

‘Carl is dead,’ she whispered. Then she screamed again. She hopped around the floor like a chicken that has had its head chopped off. She began singing a chorale, which rose to a shrieking treble. She seemed to want to outsing the howl of the bombs.

‘She’s gone batty,’ said an engineer NCO with a missing arm. A flame-thrower had burnt it off in the retreat from Kharkov.

Aunt Dora spat on the floor and glanced briefly at the singing woman. ‘Get her out the back way,’ she ordered, and nodded to the Belgian and Ewald, the pimp.

A new wave of bombs shattered the houses. The screams were drowned in the torrent of fire, which swept everything before it on the other side of Hansaplatz. An enormous vacuum cleaner devoured everything, good and bad.

Aunt Dora brought grilled chestnuts. We dipped them in the common salt standing in the middle of the table.

The Schupo picked up his helmet, put it on and walked toward the door. He was furious over the affair with the sailor.

In the same moment a Security patrol stepped in. There were four SS men and an SS
Oberscharführer
. They looked at the Schupo in gay amazement. One of them played with the magazine of his sub-machine gun. He was smiling, but not with a real smile. It was rather the contented purring of a cat when confronting a mouse that has forgotten where its hole is.

The SS
Oberscharführer
blew a long whistle.

‘Well, look what we found! A dirty copper. Warming himself in the chimney-corner, eh? I dare say our coming here was quite a surprise to you. But that’s life, you see. Chock full of good and unpleasant surprises. It might really be nice, you know, if you delivered a report.’

The policeman got up and spluttered out a report: ‘Police Sergeant Krüll, Precinct 15, Hauptbahnof, carrying out ordered patrol. Nothing special to report.’

The SD patrol laughed. The
Oberscharführer
scratched his ear with his little finger.

‘Imagination certainly isn’t your problem, gramps. Half of Bremerreihe is gone, and yet you say you have nothing special to report. Right above the stairs are two small lumps of cinders that were people not so long ago. Still nothing special to report?’

The SD patrol laughed again.

The Legionnaire was spitting out chestnut shucks. Aunt Dora lit another cheroot. The sergeant with the game license shouted: ‘Hang him!’

With a grin the SS
Oberscharführer
held out his hand to the Schupo. The policeman gave him his service order and his muster roll without saying a word. The SS
Oberscharführer
indifferently leafed through the gray booklet. He didn’t read the service order. Then he put them both in his breast pocket.

‘You seem to be very eager to get a bullet through your brain, eh, grandpa?’

The policeman blinked and muttered something under his breath.

‘The court-martial are smacking their lips for you,’ the
Oberscharführer
grinned, tipping the policeman’s nose with his finger.

‘And we are the court-martial,’ smiled the SS man who resembled a cat. The
Oberscharführer
nodded.

‘He can allow himself to sit in a whorehouse making himself comfortable, while the rest of us carry out the Führer’s order about defense and duty!’ He walked full circle round the policeman and examined him carefully, pulling out his Mauser pistol from its holster and sticking it in his own pocket. ‘You’re just the one we have been waiting for. We’re going to make a fine example of you. And now, get your snoot to the wall, and be quick about it!’

The man who looked like a cat seemed to be in a glorious mood. He nudged the policeman with his sub-machine gun and dangled the barrel before his nose. He looked hungrily at him.

‘You’re going to swing, you lazy flat-foot. And you’ll have a little tag on your breast with only one word on it:
DESERTER
.’

His four pals broke into a roar of laughter.

‘And then we’ll twine the pilfered sausages around your neck, you kleptomaniac,’ the
Oberscharführer
bawled. He walked over to Trude at the counter.

‘Five doubles, and make it snappy.’

Aunt Dora put away her cheroot and got up. She winked at Trude, who disappeared into the back room where the telephone was. Aunt Dora took Trude’s place behind the counter. She pulled fiercely at the long cheroot.

The SS
Oberscharführer
gave her a searching glance. He seemed to become uncertain of himself at the sight of the short plump woman with the brutal eyes indifferently looking at him, as if he were a fly on the wall.

‘Five doubles.’ His voice was shrill.

Aunt Dora slowly removed the cheroot from her mouth and blew the smoke in his face.

‘Why’re you making so much noise? We aren’t deaf.’

‘Then let’s have the five doubles.’

‘No.’

It rang like a shot from a 9 mm storm rifle.

We looked up. The Legionnaire smiled ominously. Lazily he got up and slid over to the bar stool beside the
Oberscharführer
.

‘Smart chap?’ he asked Aunt Dora and nodded toward the man. She shook her head.

‘No, he’s not smart. Stupid.’

‘Who’s stupid, you pimping broad?’ the
Oberscharführer
cried.

Aunt Dora again blew smoke in his eyes.

‘You, my boy. If you’d been smart, you and your housecarls over there would’ve been far away from here by now.’

Trude appeared. She nodded imperceptibly to Aunt Dora. She glared at the SS men with malicious pleasure.

The SS
Oberscharführer
was getting worked up.

‘Are you threatening us, you screwed up whore? It seems to be about time for you to take a trip up to Headquarters. Then I’ll personally beat you to mincemeat.’

His men laughed boisterously. The one who resembled a cat placed his sub-machine gun on the counter. The Legionnaire gave it a push with his finger. It crashed to the floor.

‘What the hell are you doing, you louse?’ the cat cried.

The Legionnaire bared his teeth in a vicious grin.

Aunt Dora once more glanced at Trude, who again nodded reassuringly.

‘Pick up that sprayer,’ the SS
Oberscharführer
ordered his housecarl. He turned to Aunt Dora. ‘And now, look sharp about those doubles I ordered, or we’ll help ourselves.’

‘You can’t have anything,’ Aunt Dora said, placing a bottle on the second shelf from the top.

‘What the hell is the meaning of this? Aren’t we good enough?’

‘You can’t have anything from me, though I’m sure you are doing a brilliant job of what you’re hired for.’

The
Oberscharführer
bent all the way over the bar counter and whispered with suppressed rage: ‘Five doubles, you disgusting pig, and right NOW!’

The cat sneaked noiselessly behind the counter. ‘Do as the “
Oberschar
” tells you, or your wig will go up in smoke.’

The sergeant with the game license got up and staggered drunkenly up to the bar counter.

‘Does someone want to fight!’ he hiccuped in a drunken drawl.

The
Oberscharführer
looked at him indifferently and contented himself with spitting and hissing: ‘Clear out, you foot-slogger!’

The sergeant swayed like a tree in storm. We all expected he’d fall over, but he kept his balance. He brought his face close up to the
Oberscharführer
. ‘I can see you’re badly in need of some massage.’

The SS
Oberscharführer
hit only once – with the handle of his .38. The sergeant came down, blood streaming from his nose. He fell like a post.

‘That’ll do!’ Aunt Dora cried, putting down her white cheroot. ‘If you five won’t clear out of here awful fast, you’ll have a bigger row than you bargained for!’

She picked up the cat’s sub-machine gun and placed it in his lap with an expression which brooked no contradiction. ‘This counter is not an armory. It’s a bar counter, meant for different things.’ She began feverishly dusting off the counter with a napkin and glanced toward the revolving door out of the corner of her eye.

The Legionnaire was about to say something. He managed to bring out only a ‘
Merde
.’

Aunt Dora hissed at him venomously: ‘Shut up and mind your own business!’

‘What the hell,’ the
Oberscharführer
exclaimed. ‘You filthy whore, we’ll know how to make eyes at you when you come up to us. We’re going to wreck this piss-box so thoroughly that the devil himself will envy us.’

In his fury he kicked the unconscious sergeant in the face, so that his big head bandage fell off and a long fresh operation wound appeared. It had burst in several places and water oozed out. Red flesh could be seen. A drain fell out.

A girl bent over the unconscious man. ‘Oh, Hans, poor Hans!’

She had some trouble lugging him into the niche. The SS men laughed. The
Oberscharführer
shrugged his shoulders.

‘Bring that baby along when we leave. He’s in for a shellacking. And now, those five doubles!’

The Belgian coughed a warning by the door. Aunt Dora looked up and smiled brightly.

In the revolving door stood a little man with striking features, dressed in a tight-waisted coat. A white scarf was wrapped about his neck several times. He wore white gloves and a light gray homburg. His eyes were another matter. Cadaverous and watery.

Aunt Dora lit another cheroot, snapped her fingers, and said, ‘Good evening, Paul.’

The little man nodded and said, ‘
Heil Hitler!
’