The Young Lions (23 page)

At eight o'clock in the morning the long car drove up again and the officer came out and got into it. Lieutenant-Colonel, Christian noted automatically. It was still raining.

He nearly crossed the street to the apartment house. No, he thought, that would ruin it. She'd be angry and throw me out and that would be the end of it.

He stayed behind the tree, his eyes clammy with sleep, his uniform soaked, staring up at the window which was revealed now in the grey light.

At eleven o'clock she came out. She had on short rubber boots and a belted light raincoat, with a cape attached, like a soldier's camouflage equipment. She looked fresh, as always in the morning, and young and schoolgirlish in her rain outfit. She started to walk briskly down the street.

He caught up with her after she turned the corner.

"Gretchen," he said, touching her elbow.

She wheeled nervously. "Get away from me!" she said. She looked apprehensively around her and spoke in a whisper.

"What's the matter?" he said, pleadingly. "What have I done?"

She began walking again, swiftly. He walked after her, keeping a little behind her.

"Gretchen, darling…"

"Listen," she said. "Get away. Keep away. Isn't that clear?"

"I've got to know," he said. "What is it?"

"I can't be seen talking to you." She stared straight ahead of her as she strode down the street. "That's all. Now get out. You've had a nice leave, and it'll be up in two days anyway; go back to France and forget this."

"I can't," he said. "I can't. I've got to talk to you. Any place you say. Any time."

Two men came out of a shop on the other side of the street and walked swiftly, parallel to them, in the same direction as they were going.

"All right," Gretchen said. "My place. Tonight at eleven. Don't use the front door. You can walk up the back stairs through the basement. The entrance is in the other street. The kitchen door will be unlocked. I'll be there."

"Yes," said Christian. "Thank you. That's wonderful."

"Now leave me alone," she said. He stopped and watched her walk away, without looking back, in her bright, nervous walk, accentuated by the boots and the belted rubber coat. He turned and went slowly back to his boarding-house. He lay down on the bed without taking off his clothes and tried to sleep.

At eleven o'clock that night he climbed the dark back stairs. Gretchen was sitting at a table writing something. Her back was very straight in a green wool dress, and she didn't even look round when Christian came into the room. Oh, God, he thought, it is the Lieutenant all over again. He walked lightly over behind her chair and kissed the top of her head, smelling the scented hair.

Gretchen stopped writing and turned round in the chair. Her face was cool and serious.

"You should have told me," she said.

"What?" he asked.

"You may have got me into a lot of trouble," she said. Christian sat down heavily. "What did I do?"

Gretchen stood up and began to walk up and down the room, the wool skirt swinging at her knees.

"It wasn't fair," she said, "letting me go through all that."

"Go through what?" Christian asked loudly. "What are you talking about?"

"Don't shout!" Gretchen snapped at him. "God knows who's listening."

"I wish," said Christian, keeping his voice low, "that you'd let me know what's happening."

"Yesterday afternoon," Gretchen said, standing in front of him, "the Gestapo sent a man to my office."

"Yes?"

"They had been to see General Ulrich first," Gretchen said significantly.

Christian shook his head wearily. "Who in God's name is General Ulrich?"

"My friend," said Gretchen, "my very good friend, who is probably in very hot water now because of you."

"I never saw General Ulrich in all my life," Christian said.

"Keep your voice low." Gretchen paced over to the sideboard and poured herself four fingers of brandy. She did not offer Christian a drink. "I'm a fool to have let you come here at all."

"What has General Ulrich got to do with me?" Christian demanded.

"General Ulrich," Gretchen said deliberately, after taking a large swallow of the brandy, "is the man who tried to put through your application for a direct commission and a transfer to the General Staff."

"Well?"

"The Gestapo told him yesterday that you were a suspected Communist," Gretchen said, "and they wanted to know what his connection with you was and why he was so interested in you."

"What do you want me to say?" Christian demanded. "I'm not a Communist. I was a member of the Nazi Party in Austria in 1937."

"They knew all that," said Gretchen. "They also knew that you had been a member of the Austrian Communist Party from 1932 to 1936. They also knew that you made trouble for a Regional Commissioner named Schwartz just after the Anschluss. They also knew that you had an affair with an American girl who had been living with a Jewish Socialist in Vienna in 1937."

Christian sank wearily back into the chair. The Gestapo, he thought; how meticulous and inaccurate they could be.

"You're under observation in your Company," Gretchen said.

"They get a report on you every month." She grinned sourly.

"It may please you to know that my husband reports that you are a completely able and loyal soldier and strongly recommends you for officers' school."

"I must remember to thank him," Christian said flatly, "when I see him."

"Of course," said Gretchen, "you can never become an officer. They won't even send you to fight against the Russians. If your unit is shifted to that front, you will be transferred."

What a winding, hopeless trap, Christian thought, what an impossible, boring catastrophe.

"That's it," Gretchen said. "Naturally, when they found out that a woman who worked for the Propaganda Ministry, who was friendly, officially and otherwise, with many high-ranking military and official personnel…"

"Oh, for God's sake," Christian said irritably, standing up, "stop sounding like a police magistrate!"

"You understand my position…" It was the first time Christian had heard a defensive tone in Gretchen's voice.

"People have been shipped off to concentration camps for less. You must understand my position, darling."

"I understand your position," Christian said loudly, "and I understand the Gestapo's position, and I understand General Ulrich's position, and they all bore me to death!" He strode over to her and towered over her, raging. "Do you think I'm a Communist?"

"That's beside the point, darling," Gretchen said carefully.

"The Gestapo thinks you may be. That's the important thing. Or at least, that you may not be quite… quite reliable. Don't blame me, please…" She came over to him and her voice was soft and pleading. "It would be different if I was an ordinary girl, in an ordinary unimportant job… I could see you whenever I pleased, I could go to any place with you… But this way, it's really dangerous. You don't know. You haven't been back in Germany for so long, you have no idea of the way people suddenly disappear. For nothing. For less than this. Honestly. Please… don't look so angry…"

Christian sighed and sat down. It would take a little time to get accustomed to this. Suddenly he felt he was no longer at home; he was a foreigner treading clumsily in a strange, dangerous country, where every word had a double meaning, every act a dubious consequence. He thought of the three thousand acres in Poland, the stables, the hunting week-ends. He smiled sourly. He'd be lucky if they let him go back to teach skiing.

"Don't look like that," Gretchen said. "So… so despairing."

"Forgive me," he said. "I'll sing a song."

"Don't be harsh with me," she said humbly. "What can I do about it?"

"Can't you go to them? Can't you tell them? You know me, you could prove…"

She shook her head. "I can't prove anything."

"I'll go to them. I'll go to General Ulrich."

"None of that!" Her voice was sharp. "You'll ruin me. They told me not to tell you anything about it. Just to stop seeing you. They'll make it worse for you, and God knows what they'll do to me! Promise me you won't say anything about it to anyone."

She looked so frightened, and, after all, it wasn't her doing.

"I promise," he said slowly. He stood up and looked around the room that had become the real core of his life. "Well," and he tried to grin, "I won't say that it hasn't been a nice leave."

"I'm so terribly sorry," she whispered. She put her arms around him gently. "You don't have to go… just yet…" They smiled at each other.

But an hour later she thought she heard a noise outside the door. She made him get up and dress and go out by the back door, the way he'd come, and she was vague about when he could see her again.

Lieutenant Hardenburg was in the orderly room when Christian reported. He looked thinner and more alert, as though he had been in training. He was striding back and forth with a springy, energetic step, and he smiled with what was for him great amiability, as he returned Christian's salute.

"Did you have a good time?" he asked, his voice friendly and pleasant.

"Very good, Sir," Christian said.

"Mrs Hardenburg wrote to me," the Lieutenant said, "that you delivered the lace."

"Yes, Sir."

"Very good of you."

"It was nothing, Sir."

The Lieutenant peered at Christian, a little shyly, Christian thought. "Did she er… look well?" he asked.

"She looked very fit, Sir," Christian said gravely.

"Ah, good. Good." The Lieutenant wheeled nervously in what was almost a pirouette, in front of the map of Africa that had supplanted the map of Russia on the wall. "Delighted. She has a tendency to work too hard, overdo things. Delighted," he said vaguely and spiritedly. "Lucky thing," he said, "lucky thing you took your leave when you did."

Christian didn't say anything. He was in no mood to engage in a long, social conversation with Lieutenant Hardenburg. He hadn't seen Corinne yet and he was impatient to get to her and tell her to get in touch with her brother-in-law.

"Yes," Lieutenant Hardenburg said, "very lucky." He grinned inexplicably. "Come over here, Sergeant," he said mysteriously. He went to the barred grimy window and stared out. Christian followed him and stood next to him.

"I want you to understand," Hardenburg whispered, "that all this is extremely confidential. Secret. I really shouldn't be telling you this, but we've been together a long time and I feel I can trust you…"

"Yes, Sir," Christian said cautiously.

Hardenburg looked around him carefully, then leaned a little closer to Christian. "At last," he said, the jubilance plain in his voice, "at last, it's happened. We're moving." He turned his head sharply and looked over his shoulder. The clerk, who was the only other person in the room, was thirty feet away. "Africa," Hardenburg whispered, so low that Christian barely heard him.

"The Africa Corps." He grinned widely. "In two weeks. Isn't it marvellous?"

"Yes, Sir," Christian said flatly, after a while.

"I knew you'd be pleased," said Hardenburg.

"Yes, Sir."

"There'll be a lot to do in the next two weeks. You're going to be a busy man. The Captain wanted to cancel your leave, but I felt it would do you good, and you could make up for the time you'd lost…"

"Thank you very much, Sir," said Christian.

"At last," said Hardenburg triumphantly, rubbing his hands.

"At last." He stared unseeingly through the window, his eyes on the dust clouds rising from the armoured tread on the roads of Libya, his ears hearing the noise of gunfire on the Mediterranean coast. "I was beginning to be afraid," Hardenburg said softly, "that I would never see a battle." He shook his head, raising himself from his delicious reverie. "All right, Sergeant," he said, in his usual, clipped voice. "I'll want you back here in an hour."

"Yes, Sir," said Christian. He started to go, then turned.

"Lieutenant," he said.

"Yes?"

"I wish to submit the name of a man in the 147th Pioneers for disciplinary action."

"Give it to the clerk," said the Lieutenant. "I'll send it through the proper channels."

"Yes, Sir," said Christian and went over to the clerk and watched him write down the name of Private Hans Reuter, unsoldierly appearance and conduct, complaint brought by Sergeant Christian Diestl.

"He's in trouble," the clerk said professionally. "He'll get restricted for a month."

"Probably," said Christian and went outside. He stood in front of the barracks door for a moment, then started for Corinne's house. Half-way there, he halted. Ridiculous, he thought. What's the sense in seeing her now?

He walked slowly back along the street. He stopped in front of a jeweller's shop, with a high, small window. In the window there were some small diamond rings and a gold pendant with a large topaz on the end of it. Christian looked at the topaz, thinking: Gretchen would like that. I wonder how much it costs.

NOAH stood among the patriots, waiting his turn to be interviewed by the recruiting officer. He had taken Hope home late and it had been a bad time when he told her what he was going to do, and he had slept poorly, with one of his old dreams about being put up against a wall and machine-gunned, and he had risen in the dark to go down to Whitehall Street to enlist, hoping to be early enough to avoid getting caught in the crowd he was sure would be besieging the place. As he looked around at the others he wondered how the draft had missed them all, but that was almost the limit of speculation his weary mind could manage at the moment. In the days before the attack he had tried not to think it out, but, remorselessly, his conscience had made the decision for him. If the war began, he could not hesitate. As an honourable citizen, as a believer in the war, as an enemy of Fascism, as a Jew… He shook his head. There it was again. That should have nothing to do with it. Most of these men were not Jews, and yet here they were at six-thirty of a winter's morning, the second day of the war, ready to die. And they were better, he knew, than they sounded. The rough jokes, the cynical estimates, were all on the surface, embarrassed attempts to hide the true depths of the feeling that had brought them to this place. As an American, then. He refused to put himself at this moment into any special category. Perhaps, he thought, I will ask to be sent to the Pacific. Not against Germany. That would prove to them that it wasn't because he was a Jew… Nonsense, nonsense, he thought, I'll go where they send me.