The Cross of Iron (11 page)

Kern and Anselm stood some twenty yards away from the camp, talking in undertones. ‘You don’t know how fed up I am with all this nonsense,’ Anselm muttered bitterly. ‘I’d like to walk right out on them. But you wait, I’ll get that boaster one of these days.’

Kern laughed spitefully. ‘In the first place Krüger’s too tough for you, and in the second place where would you go? To the Russians?’

‘I’d like them a damn sight better than these damned boy-scouts,’ Anselm replied.

Kern leaned against a tree and sighed. At regular intervals his stomach made protesting noises. I should have eaten that soup anyway, he thought. He was irked with himself now for not having overcome his disgust, and he began to feel sorry for himself. He took out his handkerchief and blew his nose loudly and lengthily. Anselm snapped at him: ‘Don’t make such a noise—we’re on guard, you know.’

Clumsily Kern thrust the handkerchief back into his pocket. ‘On guard against what?’ he grumbled. ‘Against the mosquitoes maybe?’ His eyes probed the dark woods. ‘Who’s supposed to relieve us, anyway?’

‘I’ll wake Krüger,’ Anselm offered maliciously.

Kern grinned. ‘Won’t he be pleased?’ He paused. ‘Is... he going to make corporal soon?’

‘Of course, he and Schnurrbart; their turn comes up at the next promotions. Listen, when they get to be N. C. Os. we can pull in our tails. They’re all alike. Rank goes right to their heads; that’s the way it is from bottom to top. It stinks. The whole damned army stinks.’ Anselm fell silent and shifted his carbine to the other shoulder. He felt very strongly about the whole matter, but found it hard to think of the right words to express his feelings. For a while he listened to the fading concert of the frogs. It was a sad music. You just aren’t treated like a human being, he thought. That was it; ‘They’ didn’t think you were human. You were just cannon-fodder for them to order around, and you couldn’t do anything about it. Not a thing. His despondency deepened.

Meanwhile Kern stood gazing moodily between the trees. A light breeze had sprung up. It shook the branches, and Kern hunched his shoulders anxiously. He envied the other men who were lying by the fire and sleeping. When you were asleep you didn’t know you were afraid, he thought. You could close your eyes and draw the blanket up over your head as he used to do at home during thunderstorms. His teeth suddenly chattered so loudly that Anselm exclaimed: ‘What’s the matter with you?’

Kern hurriedly clasped his chin. ‘Nothing, nothing at all,’ he murmured. ‘I’m just cold from standing around.’ He wagged his head from side to side. ‘It’s weird, you know. When you start to think about it: here we are in the middle of the woods, right in the middle of the Russian army.’

His fear provoked a giggle from Anselm. With an immense feeling of superiority he recalled that Kern had come to the front only two weeks ago. ‘It’s not so bad,’ he declared superciliously, ‘I’ve been through this kind of thing for ten months now—why, it’ll be a year soon. We’ve been in spots ten times worse than this,’ he boasted. When Kern remained silent and depressed, Anselm slapped him on the back. ‘By the day after tomorrow we’ll be all right,’ he said reassuringly.

His confident tone did nothing to convince Kern. The innkeeper continued to peer fearfully into the unrelieved darkness. ‘One way or another we’re for trouble anyway, I tell you,’ he said.

His plaintive tone increased Anselm’s sense of superiority. ‘Now look here,’ he said patronizingly, ‘you and I haven’t got along so well until now, but I tell you, if we want to we can be pretty good friends. We’ll come out of this all right.’ His voice took on a confidential note. ‘Let me tell you, the friendships you make at the front last a lifetime. I’ll come to see you some time after the war, with my girl, I mean. We can spend our vacation at your place.’ He grew enthusiastic at the idea. ‘We’ll take a room at your place. A double room. Boy, it’s a shame I didn’t know you before the war. A fellow gets too old for going to the park. And no chance for anything at home; you know the old lady keeps her eyes open. The old man, too. They watch one like a hawk.’ He went on talking zestfully, and Kern listened patiently to his fantasies.... An hour later, when they went to wake Krüger, Steiner was not yet back.

Dietz and Hollerbach were the last to stand sentry. During the night Schnurrbart had given orders that if Steiner were not back by four o’clock all the men should be awakened. It was twenty minutes to four when Steiner appeared among the trees. Hollerbach spotted him first. He lowered his rifle and stared in mingled anger and relief into Steiner’s exhausted face. ‘Where did you go to?’ he asked reproachfully. Steiner ignored the question. He nodded to Dietz and walked past the sentries. His incisive voice roused the men. They scrambled up, rubbing their faces sleepily. When they realized it was Steiner, they thronged around him, hurling questions. Quietly, he lit a cigarette. Schnurrbart studied his face; in spite of the darkness he could make out Steiner’s expression, and his fear instantly took flight. The questioning gradually subsided as Steiner continued to say nothing, until at last there was silence. Schnurrbart cleared his throat. ‘Are we going?’ he asked.

Steiner nodded. Schnurrbart knew him too well to ask anything more. He turned without a word and began assembling his pack. Krüger followed his example, while the rest stood around indecisively. ‘Hurry up,’ Steiner said. They looked at him blankly until Schnurrbart, who was already buckling the straps on his pack, called out: ‘Get ready.’ Hesitantly, the men began to move, angrily rolling up their blankets, tramping about heavy-footed.

They gathered in a group, shivering in the morning chill. Grey light trickled through the dense foliage above them, giving their faces a hollow, ghostly appearance. ‘Now for a cup of warm coffee,’ Anselm said, his teeth chattering.

‘I’d like a warm belly better,’ Zoll remarked.

Maag turned toward him inquisitively. ‘A woman’s.’

‘Think I’m a pansy?’ Zoll growled.

Krüger chuckled. ‘Everything in its proper time and place,’ he said. ‘When we get back to the company, they’ll send you to a whorehouse for a two-weeks rest cure.’

‘Rest-cure in a whorehouse!’ Anselm grinned scornfully. ‘Just as likely as you going ski-ing on the North Sea.’

‘You got anything against it?’ Krüger demanded belligerently. ‘If I decide to go ski-ing on the North Sea, it’s none of your bloody business.’

‘Kiss your arse,’ Anselm retorted.

The East Prussian took a step closer to him. ‘What did you say?’

Steiner took two big strides and came between them. ‘Cut that out!’ he said sharply. ‘If you have any extra energy, you’ll have plenty of chances to use it up today.’ He looked around. ‘Where’s the Professor?’

The men looked crestfallen. They had not noticed that Dorn was missing. ‘He didn’t seem to be feeling well last night,’ Hollerbach said. ‘I’ll go and see.’

‘Where is he?’ Steiner asked.

Hollerbach turned toward the trees. Steiner followed him. The Professor was still lying where Hollerbach had last seen him. He had drawn the blanket over his head and seemed to be asleep. ‘Get up!’ Hollerbach said, shaking him vigorously by the shoulder.

The blanket was thrown back and Dorn’s sleepy face emerged. ‘What’s up?’ he asked.

‘We’re going on,’ Hollerbach said. ‘Feeling better?’

Dorn sat up, brushing his hair back from his forehead. ‘I think my cramps are gone—I didn’t sleep most of the night,’ he said in extenuation.

The others had drawn near. Before anyone could ask Dorn how he felt, Steiner spoke. ‘There’s a dirt road about five miles from here. The road leads to a bridge; by the bridge are three houses; and there are Russians in the houses. That’s all.’

The men stared at him, too surprised to speak. Schnurrbart recovered first, for he had been expecting some sort of surprise. Swallowing hard, he asked: ‘How many Russians?’

Steiner tapped the barrel of his tommy-gun impatiently against the tip of his boot. ‘Since we’ve got to cross that bridge, it doesn’t matter how many there are.’

‘What do you mean?’ Krüger interposed. ‘If there’s a regiment posted there, it would be mad to start anything with them.’

‘It would be madder to imagine that a regiment of Russians have been quartered in three houses—actually they’re little more than log huts. They must be either a guard for the bridge or a column passing through. At any rate their maps are better than ours or the road would be marked on my map. Let’s go. And hang on to your ammunition boxes. We’re going to need them.’

It had grown considerably lighter during the past few minutes. Slender shafts of light came through the leaves of the trees like jets of so many invisible fountains. Above the tree-tops birds broke into a wild morning concert. Pasternack, walking last in the line, thought of the fairy-tales his father used to tell. Most of them were set in forests, and these, as he had imagined them, were much like this one. After his father’s death in the mine, the family had had a hard time of it. He was the oldest of seven, three boys and four girls. His mother was away all day, working as a cleaning woman. A quiet woman who seldom smiled and who bore her misfortune as if it were a distinction. On Sundays she would wash the children with special care, dress them in the best of their patched clothes, and take them to the cathedral. There she often cried. Once, when he had asked her why she cried in church, she had said: ‘Other people leave an offering in the box; I have nothing to leave but tears.’ And she had begun to cry again. The memory saddened him. He forgot where he was, no longer felt the painful tug of the ammunition boxes, the scraping of his belt against his hip, the pressure of the rifle slung over his shoulder. Staring down at the ground, he put one foot ahead of the other as he had already done for thousands of miles, and he moved along between the melancholy memories of the past and the gloomy prospects of the future without being fully aware of his grief.

At the head of the line, a few yards behind Steiner, Schnurrbart and Krüger were talking. They spoke in low voices, occasionally glancing suspiciously in all directions, although there was little to see; the brush became thicker as they advanced.

‘Shit!’ Krüger spat on the forest floor and peered up at the leaves, trying to see through to the sky. ‘Think it will rain today?’ Schnurrbart shrugged. ‘I doubt it. It’ll probably be the same as yesterday.’

‘Shit, anyhow!’ Krüger stated. ‘It doesn’t matter one way or the other.’ His stubborn pessimism made Schnurrbart smile. ‘Old grumbler,’ he said. He hitched up his belt and glanced at Krüger’s unshaven face. ‘You look like a hog,’ he said affectionately. Krüger ran his hand over his chin and grinned. ‘Take a look at yourself. You’re in a fine position to talk.’ He turned his eyes ahead and shouted: ‘Slow down there, think I’m an express train?’ Steiner stopped and waited for them. ‘Don’t yell around here,’ he snapped. ‘You might scare the Russians away.’

Krüger swore under his breath. They walked on together. ‘How far is it now?’ Schnurrbart asked, wiping the sweat from his face.

Steiner glanced at his watch. ‘About thirty minutes.’

‘To the road?’

‘Yes.’

‘And then?’

‘Then we cross the bridge.’

Dully, they marched on. Steiner held to a slower pace and stopped occasionally to listen. Each time he did so the men looked up uneasily. They spoke little. The silence of the woods seemed to radiate menace; they felt the danger like a pain that transformed their senses into supersensitive instruments. Anselm walked behind Schnurrbart. Although it was still cool here beneath the trees, he felt his shirt sticking wetly to his back. His thoughts hovered on the edge of a dark chasm; every moment he expected to hear the sudden crackle of a Russian tommy-gun.

Once he glanced back and saw behind him Dora’s pale face The awareness that Dorn was frightened too only intensified his own fear. This damned forest, he thought, this damned forest. The noise Steiner made as he broke a path through a clump of bushes sounded like an infernal din. If the Russians don’t hear that, they’re deaf, he thought. For a while he tried to imagine what it would feel like to be wounded. Only not in the belly, he thought, anything but that. He pictured himself lying on the ground, writhing, while the others ran away. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ he whispered. Perhaps he should have prayed before going to sleep last night. Once upon a time he had prayed consistently. His parents were deeply religious and went to church every Sunday in spite of the Party’s opposition. His parents had insisted on his attending mass and taking communion as they did. He’d been a good boy until he was seventeen, until he met Gertrude. She was three years older than he, a tall girl with long legs. It wasn’t that he had wanted to. It had just come over him all at once. He could still remember her gesture, the way she had pulled her skirt up over her knees, saying she wanted to get a tan. And then she had just reached out, and pulled him toward her so suddenly that it took his breath away. And then ... he swallowed hard as he remembered.

The first time he had confessed, of course. But then confession had become harder and harder, and finally he no longer bothered. After a while he gave up praying, too. For the first time in years this struck him as a sin. Gertrude had not been the only girl. There were Hildegard and Gisela and Christa. Though it hadn’t worked out with Christa. She came from a good family, with a religious background. When he had tried, she had simply run away. . . .

Despite his present, repentant state of mind he grew angry even now as he thought of it and for a moment he even forgot his fear. The silly goose, he thought indignantly, why did she follow him into the woods at all? Did she think he wanted to catch glowworms with her? ‘After the wedding,’ she had said. When could they have married? After the war, perhaps, in the mass-grave? Oh, all that nonsense! If two people wanted to, they should go ahead, church or no church. In fact, it was all their fault. If‘they’ had not been so stubborn, he would have continued praying and going to confession and everything would have been all right. Oh, well, he thought, when I am home again I shall go back to confession and just leave out the part about the women. Perhaps he would start praying again, too. All one had to do was to survive this mess. The thought relieved him. Until now he had not missed anything he could not catch up on afterwards. And why should something happen to him, of all the many men. He had been in Russia for a long while, and he had survived worse situations.