Another Green World (41 page)

Come on, Ingo—
Martina never would take “no”—
it'll be worth it, you know it will. A real adventure!
He did not disagree. He imagined with hallucinogenic clarity just what kind of adventure it would be.

Only then, Anton. Forced to a decision of his own. Classes would start in a week, he noted with odd dispassion. The journey out and back must take at least twice that, even if the return were made by train. Those first lectures would be crucial: Anatomical Structure, with the well-known Professor Doktor Sippewitz—to miss the beginning is to lose the foundation for everything that follows. And the Theory of Eugenics, a recent offering, scandalous and popular, there was a danger of losing one's place on the class roster. No, it could not be avoided, emotions have no place in this matter, it's only a question of timing.

Hagen had said: This is how simple the matter is. And so it was, and there was no use in arguing. Nor in trying to sleep. Better to stand guard in the tower against the coming of dawn.

Nach irren nächten sind die morgen schlimm.
George's deathly pentameter, precise as a scalpel.
After nights of madness, mornings are grim.

One feature of being Ingo—
ein Eigene
, a singular being, for lack of a more helpful term—was that you were denied many of the ordinary opportunities for emotional display. Unless you happened to find yourself in an enchanted spot like Frau-Holle-Quell, where rules were magically suspended, you were advised to keep your feelings pretty damned close to your chest. Of course he was quite good at this, having spent half his lifetime honing a talent that already came naturally; but that was not the
same as finding it easy to do. He remembered reading of a famous actor, a lion of the theater, who became violently ill from stage fright before every performance. Ingo felt sick now—not Carpathian flu, this was far worse— as the little band of hikers, making ready to depart, sorted itself out from those who were staying behind.

There were hugs for each of them from the good Frau Möhring—for Ingo, Martina, Butler, Isaac, even for Hagen, who failed to respond. More hugs from Käthe, along with a detailed map drawn on the back of an outdated flyer, pressed into Martina's hand. (Hagen: “We do not need this map. I can find any place you might name.”) Effusive farewells and good wishes from some of the Young Socialists, Käthe's friends, the kitchen crew. At the end there were Ingo and Anton, standing eye-to-eye, with too much to say or nothing at all. How can you find a compromise, what sort of chummy goodbye would not be a vulgar apostasy?

Anton had given the matter some thought, it seemed. He opened his sketchbook, the one he used for field observations, and spoke with his eyes safely away from Ingo's, carefully removing a page. “I have heard of a certain flower,” he said, “a blue flower—as I understand, it is not to be found in any of the scientific literature. Perhaps it is only a legend, yet there are those, my friend has told me, who claim to have seen it. I may have glimpsed this flower myself, only yesterday. Here, this is a drawing, perhaps you could help me make a positive identification.”

Ingo took the paper but did not look at it; save that for later. “Do you know Hofmannsthal?” he said.

“Alas, no. He is modern, I think?”

“He died just this year. There's a poem called ‘Infinite Time’— ‘Unendliche Zeit.’ They'd probably have it in your library at the university.”

“Thank you, I shall find it.”

It's not like they didn't warn you. It's not as though the entire corpus of German literature from the
Nibelungenlied
onward was not one long, breathless chronicle of heartache and loss. Frequent spurting of blood and other body fluids. Then more loss, more betrayal, more loneliness. Ingo knew it, he had always known it; it was the worst-kept secret in all of Secret Germany. Yet look at him now—like a boar who manages to be surprised by the sudden tearing at his chest, even though he has been hearing
Jägerhörner
and baying hounds all morning.

It's only a question of timing.

Hagen, scorning Käthe's map, took unto himself the role of pathfinder. He marched ahead with Butler following and Martina alternately trying to keep up and not, ultimately falling back with Ingo. He found a silent comfort in her company. Then she would blow it by opening her mouth.

Isaac was not predictable. Something in him resisted being assigned a place, or staying in one. There were times when he lagged, others when he skipped ahead, probably to annoy Hagen, whose pace was brisk but precisely measured. More than once he vanished from the trail altogether— only to reappear half an hour later, lounging in tall yellow grass or squatting puckishly on an overhang, moving his mouth in amusement as if chewing imaginary gum.

“Was für einen Pfadfinder denn?” he said once, sarcastically, looking down on Hagen's head. What kind of trailblazer is this? Hagen pretended to ignore him but it seemed to Ingo, from his vantage point in the rear guard, that the German boy was tracking Isaac's movements attentively. There was an odd sort of game between them—fox and hound, or maybe, in the local tradition, hare and hedgehog. The rules were unclear and so were the players' motives. You assumed they were on opposing sides, though in the folktale the two hedgehogs, unbeknownst to the hare, are acting in sneaky connivance. Now and then Ingo wondered if these two were pulling something over on everyone. Pulling it over even on themselves.

During a longish stop for rest—which everyone pretended not to need, yet which no one was eager to see an end of—Hagen lectured them on the theory of hunting. Lesson one: Game Is Where You Find It.

“It is not best to be in deep forest. Nor again, the open Weide. These extremes are for the most part empty. No, what is needed is the edge, the in-between area. On this side the trees, on that side the meadow. At the
edge the animals find cover. They find also leaves and berries and smaller creatures to eat. They find long lines of sight, so they may notice the coming of their enemies. In every respect, the edge is best for them—it is here the hunter should seek his prey.”

Isaac heard only part of this. Hunting didn't interest him, apparently. He got up and wandered off somewhere—not far, Ingo suspected. Probably just out there in the undergrowth, eavesdropping on them from some hidey-hole. A native of the fringes, our Isaac. And in this, at least, a clansman of Ingo himself.

Camp that first night was on a hill south of Plauen. There was a youth hostel in town and another a few kilometers farther, in Greiz. They decided to pass on these because they had reached the western edge of Saxony, a stronghold of right-wing bands like the Jungdeutsche Orden. The arrival at a hostel of such an odd-looking group might, they feared, spark gossip. So under the stars it shall be tonight, perhaps tomorrow. Then we'll be in Czechoslovakia, a quiet country, the Sudetenland, Germans and Slavs living together peacefully—we'll have no trouble from that point.

Meanwhile, the question of dinner. The good Frau Möhring had packed some provisions for them, but hadn't they ought to save that for the long road ahead? Over the mountains and through the woods to a model Socialist hamlet.

“I will get food,” Hagen announced.

“Yeah, how?” said Isaac in his most annoying tone. You could imagine him as a little kid, pushing through a crowd on the sidewalk to get his two bits in. And look, there's his mother, watching through the window, fretting. Someday, she knows, one of those larger boys is going to push back.

Wish you were here, Ma.

“I will set snares,” Hagen explained. “It is a skill they taught us. I have everything I need. You may start the fire within the next hour.”

Isaac rolled his eyes. “This I gotta see.”

They set off into the underbrush together—one stepping boldly ahead, the other slipping after him like a thief, though after a few steps you couldn't tell which was which. Among the others, responsibility divided itself in a manner that was more or less spontaneous, or at least went undiscussed. Ingo scavenged fallen branches for firewood. Martina opened bags and arranged their equipment and brought a homey order to the campsite. Butler concerned himself with Ingo's pup tent, which couldn't
hold all of them, and perhaps that was Butler's point: Might as well let him and Marty have it, what say? Thanks, old boy, you're a sport. Ingo didn't really care. He was in no mood for enclosure.

Hagen returned a good while later, not before the fire was well burned-down, looking disconsolate. He'd caught only a squirrel, thankfully plumped for the coming winter, and a scrawny fowl that had chosen the wrong patch of ground to go pecking in.

“That's great!” Martina exclaimed doubtfully. “We'll just throw in some, ah, green stuff. And it won't hurt to eat a
little
of the bread.”

“Where's Isaac?” Ingo felt obliged to ask.

Hagen didn't give much of a reply; apparently the two had parted company. While Martina considered what to do with the meager catch, Hagen pulled from his knapsack a pretty wooden recorder, settled himself at a somewhat awkward remove and performed, flawlessly but with little feeling, a series of Youth Movement favorites. Martina tried to sing along—the gal's got heart, even Ingo conceded that—but she didn't know many of the lyrics. Her English-language rendering of “When I Go A-Wandering” was something he believed he would never forget. Afterward, Butler told off-color jokes as the light began to fail. Ingo contributed nothing whatever, beyond his brooding presence. Even this, he felt, was below par. This was the worst day of his life, and he was not about to let anything spoil it.

Now rub the lamp.

Poof !— a flurry of stage magic—and here before us stands Isaac. Isaac the Ever-Surprising. Isaac—can you believe it?— the Provider. In one hand a freshly slaughtered hen, well fleshed, sans head. In the other a piece of cloth, color deep azure, function unclear.

“There you go,” he said, to no one especially. He laid the hen before the fire. It was too good, too plump and perfect, to be credible. At the very least, it begged an explanation that was not, however, forthcoming. Not then, not ever. The blue cloth he sent lofting through the evening air. It unfurled in flight, revealing itself to be an ordinary, Scout-style bandanna. “I guess you must've dropped that,” he told Hagen. The German boy looked much less thankful than humiliated. Then, striving to top his tormentor in magical prowess, he fluffed the old make-the-hankie-disappear trick.

What do you know? thought Ingo. Nothing much, really. There were mysteries here and he supposed they would only deepen, as the better sort of mystery did.

After dinner (which was delicious, hunger being the finest sauce) he rolled out his blanket, turned his back to the others and carefully withdrew
Anton's drawing from a jacket pocket, just over his heart. It was a pen-and-ink sketch of a flower that—though technically nonexistent—was nonetheless rendered in botanically exact detail. Stem, leaf, petal, stamen, seed pod, each part labeled in a graceful, meticulous hand. The plant was identified as
Gentiana poetica.
The drawing itself was a poem, he thought, in its inspiration, its density, its rigorous composition. In the tears it brought to one's eyes.

What was that business about a poem?

MID-NOVEMBER 1944

T
he key to making this work,” said Seryoshka, “is a narrow concentration of force leading to a rapid breakthrough. One quick thrust”—jabbing a finger at the map—” and we're over the line, into the enemy's rear. After that we're just dealing with partisan-hunters, not frontoviks. It isn't the same as being unopposed. But we should make rapid progress, especially if we keep to the backcountry.”

He looked at the others, half a dozen men gathered in the political offi-cer's yurt. Besides Butler and the
politruk
, there were a couple operations specialists from Division, a signals man who spoke English and implored Butler to call him Bo, and a roly-poly combat engineer who wore a hand-knitted yarmulke under his helmet while crawling through German minefields. So far, Butler thought, they'd heard nothing that everyone present did not already know.

“There are two possibilities,” Seryoshka went on. “One, we can probe for a weak spot in the enemy line. This would entail reconnaissance-in-force. Or two, and more simply, we could force the hinge.”

He paused to let his audience think it over. It was clear to Butler that his friend preferred the second alternative. Forcing the hinge meant striking at the point where two opposing formations intersect, the small gap between two divisions, or corps, or armies—the higher up, the better. It was a risky ploy: in effect, you were doubling the number of units that stood against you. What you hoped to achieve was an interlude of uncertainty, a temporary breakdown in the enemy's tactical coordination. Whenever two military staffs are confronted by the same problem, there is likely to be a delay during which things are sorted out, intelligence shared, boundaries set, responses calibrated. By the time the dust settles, with any luck, you've accomplished your objectives—in this case, to rip the seam apart and hold
it open long enough to push a motorized regiment through. If not, you're fucked from both sides.

“One argument in favor of going for the hinge is the enemy's order of battle. Facing us in this sector, we have the 21 SS, one of the so-called foreign divisions, in this case mainly Bulgarians. On its left flank stands the 345 Infantry, a regular Wehrmacht formation dredged up this summer from what's left of Franconia. Old men, boys, desk-murderers.”