Crack of Doom (17 page)

"Then the Russians would now be holding Durkov as well, and if we want to recover Rozhanovce, we must have Durkov. There'd really be no point in trying to block the pass at Rozhanovce if the Russians could get to Kosice from here without any trouble. Besides, we're sitting on their flank here. I'd rather attack from the south than up a steep mountain from the west."

"Where are your battalions?" asked Kolmel.

"Two in the wood, on both sides of the Durkov-Rozhanovce road; the third here. The pioneer battalion is covering the south."

"Good."

"Leave two companies here," Stiller told Kreisel. "With the rest you will attack Rozhanovce."

"Two companies!" protested Kreisel. "My regiment is too weak as it is. After all, sir, you've got the pioneer battalion here."

"Kindly leave that to me," Stiller answered coldly, disconcerted by the insolent tone of the young lieutenant colonel wearing the Knight's Cross. "I need the pioneer battalion for Hopper," he added, raising his voice. "As for the two companies you're leaving here, they're to protect Durkov from the east. We don't know where else there might be Russians too. It wouldn't surprise me if they suddenly turned up outside our front door. As long as the gap up forward is open, they can march through the woods unimpeded."

"I doubt that," put in Wieland. "What would they want in Durkov when they've got Rozhanovce? To attack that we need every man."

Stiller stared at him. Wieland was a tall, broad-shouldered man with long arms, and a bull-neck indicating stubbornness. When he spoke, his ruddy face with the thin reddish eyelashes worked violently, giving it a nervous look. Stiller was about to retort sharply and put the man in his place, when Kolmel interjected: "Perhaps for the corps commander's benefit, I might ask a few questions. How was the break-through possible- at all?"

"Same as usual," answered Wieland bluntly. "Two battalions weren't strong enough to hold the positions."

"Then I don't understand why General Marx took a battalion away from you."

"I understand as little as you. Perhaps Herr Giesinger knows."

The eyes of all the officers turned abruptly on Giesinger, who had been listening indifferently in the background. When Kolmel looked hard at him, he raised his head and commented: "Colonel Wieland had the smallest sector, exactly a third of what the other regiments had."

"But they weren't right on the road," Wieland burst out. "I told you straight away. . . ."

"Let's leave that for a moment," Kolmel broke in. "Apart from the direct hit on your twenty-five pounder, you still had the two lighter guns on the road. Couldn't they hold up the tanks?"

"There was only one left by then, the other got two tanks before being mown down. Also, Russian infantry were swarming about everywhere. If I hadn't ordered the second gun back to Rozhanovce, it'd be gone too. My men. . . ."

"Your men ran away," Kolmel finished the sentence. "They didn't even wait till the tanks had come. We met thirty of them on the way up, and goodness knows how many of them are still roaming round the wood."

"From my regiment?"

"Yes, from your regiment, led by a sergeant, cheerfully making for KoSice. You needn't explain to me why the Russians broke through in your sector. In your place I'd have been up to the forward positions myself, instead of crawling off to Durkov with my command post."

Wieland looked as if he were going to have an apoplectic fit. "I didn't move my command post till the Russians were right there."

"If you'd seen to it that your men stayed in their trenches, the Russians might never have
been
there. Your battalion commanders. . . ."

"I've only one left"

"The others are already on their way to Kosice, I suppose. It wouldn't surprise me."

"What!" Wieland staggered backward. "You say that to me of all people. Who held the whole damn show together at Turka and at Lvov, where you got my regiment cut to pieces in your counter-attack?"

"Control yourself," said Stiller sharply.

"I protest against Colonel Kolmel's insinuations, sir. If I'm expected as regimental commander to hold a sector, I should be given a regiment to do it with. For six months I've just had a battalion under me, and I can't occupy a regiment's sector with one battalion. If corps can't see that, they should choose another whipping-boy. . . ."

"For the last time I order you to control yourself," cried Stiller. "Where the hell do you think you are?" They stared at each other for several seconds with rage in their eyes, then Stiller turned to Kolmel. "Things are going to be different here, I assure you. In the future I shall treat as a deserter any regimental commander who moves his command post without my permission. As for your sergeant," he told Wieland, "you can collect his paybook from my car and the pay-books of the thirty others he had with him. I had him shot for cowardice. It'll be just the same in the future for anyone I catch trying to run away."

Wieland looked at him, shocked, but Stiller was already addressing Kreisel. "That goes for your men too. With your regiment and the pioneer battalion how could you let yourself be pushed out of Rozhanovce again?"

"First of all," said Kreisel rebelliously, "where my regiment is concerned I must associate myself with Colonel Wieland's attitude. Secondly, as for the pioneer battalion, I didn't see it until I got to Durkov."

"What! Didn't it attack with you?"

"With me, sir? You must be joking. There was no pioneer battalion there when we attacked. If I'd had it, we'd be holding Rozhanovce now. My regiment on its own was far too weak."

Kolmel turned on Giesinger, whose face was ashen. "You reported to corps that you'd sent off the assault regiment and the pioneer battalion together."

"I told you, sir. . . ." began Giesinger.

"Is that right or not?" Stiller cut in.

"In a certain sense."

"Yes or no?"

"Yes, sir."

"Together?"

"Yes, sir, that is . . ."

"What?"

"We don't need to ask any more," Kolmel interjected. He had taken a notebook out of his pocket and was slamming through the pages. "He didn't send off the pioneer battalion till he'd been reminded by me that he had such a thing."

"Hm—false report," said Stiller.

The officers stared at Giesinger in silence. Wieland gave a bitter laugh. "We regimental commanders get raked over the coals when the whole bungle has started in division. It was like that with the anti-tank gun, and. . . ."

"You have your anti-tank gun," Kolmel told him. "I want to see the commander of the pioneer battalion."

"He's at his command post," said Kreisel.

"Then put me on to him." He waited impatiently for Kreisel to hand him the telephone. While he was phoning, all the officers' eyes were on him. "Just as I thought," he told Stiller after hanging up. "The pioneer battalion didn't leave till the assault regiment had been on its way for some time. When they reached the fork, instead of making for Rozhanovce they came on to Durkov. I suppose it was much the same with the reconnaissance unit."

"I don't know anything about that," said Wieland.

"Nor do I," said Kreisel.

"Then we can write them off. I imagine Major Fuchs tried to take a short cut to Slancik and so ran straight into the Russians."

Again the eyes of the officers fastened on Giesinger. He looked into Stiller's cold eyes, and said: "Major Fuchs was quite well aware I wasn't sending him to any picnic at Slancik. So it's not the case that he ran into the Russians all unsuspecting, if he did run into them, and even that's not certain yet. He and the reconnaissance unit may equally well have lost their way in the wood."

For a moment it looked as if Kolmel wanted to say something, but then he turned abruptly and shook hands with the other officers, pointedly ignoring Giesinger. The general walked with him out into the street. Kolmel's driver started the engine. It was snowing hard, the mountains on the other side were now scarcely visible.

"The pass is up there," remarked Kolmel.

"I'll get it back."

"I hope you will, sir. The pass is as important for corps as for you. The Kosice front hangs or falls by it"

CHAPTER

9

"What are you thinking of?" Maria asked. Her clothes were strewn untidily over the floor. The stove in the room was cherry red, and outside the window snow was falling.

Kolodzi started out of his thoughts. He had been thinking about Maria, thinking she had changed. He was remembering how she always used to get dressed at once, almost in a hurry, and had avoided his eyes. Today it was different. She was sitting at his side, leaning slightly forward, and he could see the curving line of her slender back.

"You'll be surprised to hear," he answered, "that I wasn't thinking of anything."

"I know you too well to believe that. Perhaps you're having regrets again."

"Perhaps, but that makes no difference. Only it's about time we made up our minds what we're going to do."

"That's simple enough—stay here."

"I might just as well give myself up to the Russians. And there are too many people in Olmutz who knew me. But I've thought of something. We might go to Pawlowitsch, at Baska. Nobody knows me there. -What do you think of that?"

Maria was silent. Pawlowitsch was an old friend of Kolodzi's. They had been working for the same transport firm, and when Kolodzi was fired Pawlowitsch had been so angry he too went off to another firm. Privately he was pro-German, but he was one of the people you could expect to change their minds overnight. That, however, was something you couldn't tell Kolodzi, so Maria tried a different tack: "It might well be too much for him if all three of us descended on him at once."

"Well, well just have to make ourselves very small. Anyhow at the moment I don't see any alternative. As soon as the war's over, we'll go to Wertheim or somewhere else, out of Czechoslovakia anyhow. You'll soon feel at home in Germany."

He rose, went over to the window, and looked out through the curtain on to the street. He heard Maria's voice behind him. "My God, but you've grown thin. Don't you soldiers get anything to eat?"

It upset him to have her watching him as he stood naked by the window, and he quickly went back to her. "Only paymasters and maggots got fat in Russia. Don't you like me any more?"

"Of course I do. It just struck me, that's all."

"You could do with some more fat yourself. How do you do it—growing more beautiful all the time?"

She slapped him lightly on the mouth. "Stefan!"

"Well, it's true, isn't it?"

Her face flushed and she struggled against his hands. He felt her long legs against his knees, and her hips pressing against him, so that there was nothing left that parted them.

"Stay this way."

"I'd like to stay this way forever," she said.

"Good. If that's the case, I doubt whether there could be anything more important."

"Than this, you mean?"

"Yes, stay like it, stay just this way. Can you feel what I mean?"

She nodded. "And you must stay like it too, Stefan. You must always stay like it, till the war's over. I want to be without fear at last. I want to stop having to remember about the war. Do you understand?"

"Yes, I do-I do."

"What do I care about the war? You men think of nothing but the war. What do you get out of the war? Nothing, if it's lost—and nothing if it's won."

"If we'd won it, we shouldn't have to be leaving Olmütz."

"You meant to leave Olmütz anyhow. Or was that mere talk?"

"I don't go in for mere talk along those lines."

"All the more reason why you shouldn't care a damn how the war ends."

"One can't think only of oneself."

"You don't have to—think of me, think of us. Other people think of themselves first. I've got blood in my veins: at twenty-five a woman wants her man to belong to
her,
not to the war."

"For this?"

She did not answer, but he could feel her impatience. And he was impatient too. He put his mouth to hers, and his legs lay along her legs. He closed his eyes, and felt he had been right to stay with her, because there had to come a point where all uncertainty ended. And she was so close to him now that he was aware of nothing but the smooth curve of her hips like a high dam against which all his emotions were piling: good emotions and bad, tender and brutal, lofty and base; his whole being surged up against a dam which grew weaker and weaker until it gave, and all his blood drained from him, and his body floated like an empty shell on the raging waters which lifted him and flung him down and lifted him again—until he realized that the whole flood of movement was now only in his brain.

From somewhere a long way away Maria's hands came and clutched his arms. He looked into her agitated face, looked at her twisted mouth and into her feverish eyes. Then she said something, and Kolodzi stared at her.

Of course, he thought, why on earth did I stop? He hadn't realized what was happening, because it had never happened to him before; and while he was still feeling surprised about it, a noise which his ears had registered faintly for some time suddenly burst into his consciousness. Before Maria could stop him, he rushed to the window. There were people standing in the road, men and women, also a few soldiers, and they were all staring in the same direction. The barrage had started.

Heavily, Kolodzi turned around. Maria stood in front of him with an expression on her face he had never seen before. He looked past her at his uniform and then at Schmitt's binoculars.

I must take them back, he thought. Without a word he got dressed. Maria did not move. Not until he hung the binoculars around his neck did she ask: "Where are you going?"

He did not answer. The coffee things were still on the table. The stove glowed with heat, the rumbling outside the window grew louder and louder.

"I'll never forgive you this," said Maria.

"What?"

"This. No woman would put up with it. It's worse than having to
wait
a year or two."

"That's what you say now. Don't you understand that it happened of its own accord?"

"If you loved me, it wouldn't have happened."

"It can happen to any man. It hasn't anything to do with love. I tell you—you don't understand. When you've heard that noise for four years it's just as bad as if someone were firing a gun in this very room. I could feel it long before I actually heard it."

"You heard it at once. You wouldn't have heard it if–––"

"If what?"

"You know what I mean. You once told me that at a moment like that you wouldn't stop even if the house were crashing about your ears."

"This is an automatic thing. I can't help it I heard the firing before."

"Other men wouldn't have heard it."

"You talk as if you'd slept with plenty of them."

She rushed up to him, her eyes blazing. "You know very well that I haven't slept with other men, but I might now."

"Nice of you to tell me!" he shouted.

She wept with rage.

"Yes, I've told you now, and I’ll be glad when you're really gone. Go ahead—what are you waiting for? Go to your Vohringer and your Herbig."

Kolodzi gripped her by the shoulders. "What on earth has got into you? There are millions of women who. . . ."

"I don't care. If they're stupid enough to let their men be shot down, they don't deserve any better. I kept quiet because you told me it was important for both of us the Germans should win the war. But do you find them winning it?"

"You'll see that yet," Kolodzi said desperately. He let go of her and fetched his gun from the kitchen. When he returned to the room, Maria was lying on the bed, sobbing. He said: "It was all wrong the way I tried to tackle it. I promised to go back and I must keep my promise. But I'll be with you again in a few days."

She turned her tear-stained face toward him. 'If you're alive then."

"That's what you said yesterday, and I'm still alive today. Be sensible now, you can hear for yourself that there's all hell let loose out there. I can't leave the others stranded at Oviz in this mess. You'll have to go straight off to Pawlowitsch today. And he's sure to find some way of getting Mother to Baska."

"I don't want to go to Baska."

"Why not?"

"I'm not one of your soldiers you can order about. Yesterday you told me we were going to Olmütz, today you come back and tell me it's not Olmütz but Wertheim we have to go to, and now it's not Wertheim either, but Baska. I'm staying here."

"Oh, hell!" Kolodzi exclaimed. "Are you going to be reasonable now and listen to me, or not?"

She was staring down at the floor. "Maria," he said, clasping her hand between his own hands. "I've got just five minutes more, and if we can't agree by then, I'm staying with my company until the war's over. And you can be sure that in that case we shan't see each other again. Now are you going to listen to me?"

"I've always listened to you."

"Well. ... I said Olmütz yesterday because at that time I didn't know anything about Wertheim, and when Vohringer suggested it, I ran away from my company to tell you to go to Wertheim, not Olmütz. And now I've dropped Wertheim because you won't be able to get through now. You won't get through, can't you understand that? Just listen to the barrage, I know about that. If it's as bad as this, we can't stop the Russians. They may be here in a few hours. Even now if you went to the station you wouldn't get a train. You must go to Baska—that's not ordering you about, it's speaking in your interest and mine."

"If you really have our interests so much at heart, then why don't you stay here?"

"I've explained that. There are two men waiting for me at Oviz, and I've got to return these binoculars to the captain."

"Is that all?"

"It's enough—quite enough for me. Perhaps you'll understand some time. Would you rather I had to go about with a guilty conscience for the rest of my life?"

"You've no reason to have that."

"Not if I return to Oviz now. I don't want to run into anyone in Germany later on whom I can't look in the eyes."

"Then well just have to stay here. Czechoslovakia is a big place."

"It won't be when the Russians come."

"You've let the Germans stuff your head with a lot of nonsense. What do you care about politics?"

"This has nothing to do with politics," Kolodzi said impatiently. "Look at Vohringer. You could offer him a castle over here, and he'd still stay in Wertheim. And it's just the same with the others: they all know where they belong."

"They're Nazis," Maria objected in hostile tones.

"That isn't true. I could name quite a number of men in my company who I know are against the Party. The Nazis are not Germany."

"Nor are the Czechs Slovakia.''

She had him in a corner. He glanced at her sideways, at her face and at her breasts; he felt he had never looked at the breasts properly before. Somehow they seemed fuller now, fuller and more beautiful, with a sweet heaviness which reminded him of ripe grapes. And as he looked at them, he knew he could never be without Maria again. One day he would have to leave Herbig and Vohringer, but Maria. . . . He forced himself to speak calmly: "I'll explain to you some other time."

"There's nothing for you to explain," she said coldly. "I know what you're going to explain to me all over again, and I don't want to listen to it."

Kolodzi suddenly felt he had a complete stranger sitting by him. He tried to put his arms around her but she pushed him away. "Stop that," she told him harshly. "It's always when you want to. For once it so happens I don't."

"All right," said Kolodzi. He looked at the door. It was only five steps away yet he hesitated because he was frightened by the finality of those steps. He sat there helplessly, not knowing what to do next. To act on impulse was something entirely foreign to his nature. He took time over his decisions, waiting for them to ripen, till they dropped into his consciousness almost independently of him; after which nothing could stop him from carrying them out. And his decision to stay with Maria had not yet ripened, he could feel that now. The line he wanted to draw should be firm and definite, not blurred so that one could quibble about it afterward. Probabilities weren't good enough for him. Only four years ago it had looked as if the Germans were winning the war, today it seemed probable they were losing it, and who could say how things would look tomorrow. But if he went to the door now, that would be final, and he was not going to risk it.

He sat stiffly upright and said: "Why won't you understand that hearing the barrage gave me a shock? I'd have heard it even if my ears had been plugged. Every morning for two years I've woken up with my heart thumping, waiting for the sound. You sit here acting as if it were the only other thing which had happened and nothing else. You don't seem to mind at all that the Russians may be here in a few hours and everything blasted to bits exactly as our forward positions are being blasted to bits now."

She started crying again and rose to pick up her clothes. Kolodzi jumped up and pressed her to him. "Maria," he began, but couldn't think of anything more to say to her. She pushed him back, trying to break away. Her face was contorted and wet with tears.

"Maria!" he repeated in a louder voice. "Do be sensible, Maria."

"But I've always been sensible," she answered. "That's just why you've got to stay now. You simply can't leave now when it's Christmas tomorrow. If it's so necessary, I'll go to Germany with you—I'd go to Russia with you if you wanted that. It's all the same to me where we're going. Only you mustn't leave me alone. I can't bear to be alone any more. If you're dead, I shall have nothing left, nothing," she said despairingly. "I shall have nothing left."

Her outburst staggered him. He put both his hands on her shoulders. "Ill come to Baska."

"Don't go away," she said. "I'm frightened, you can't leave me alone."

"Nothing will happen to you in Baska."

"But I'll be afraid in Baska too, it's awful."

"What is?"

"Just listen," she answered, staring at him with wide eyes. Kolodzi looked toward the window. The thunder from the front was becoming fiercer. "It always sounds worse in the distance," he told her, knowing it was not true. "At Baska nothing can happen to you, the Russians have nothing against you Czechs."