Comrades of War (11 page)

We grinned. We slapped our thighs and roared with laughter. Tiny pretended to fall off his chair and to go into convulsions of laughter. He threw up and turned around in his vomit. Brandt poured a pail of water over him. Not for Tiny’s sake, but because of the stink.

The old Jew continued, undisturbed: ‘I was in the 76th Infantry Regiment, Altona. They wanted me to enter the Guards at Potsdam. I snapped my fingers at the Guards. Grenadiers of the Guards with white insignia! No, thank you, I preferred the men of the Altona 76th. I went home every evening to eat meat balls. I love meat balls and potato pancakes.’

Porta, who was cleaning his ear with the point of his bayonet, glanced at the Jew.

‘As soon as we’ve rested a little, I’ll make a stack of pancakes for you,’ he promised.

‘I’ll help you,’ Tiny said and pulled his nose.

Heide turned around on the floor and muttered, ‘Down with Adolf. Long live the Jews!’

Porta spat at him.

‘I was demobilized in 1919,’ Stief continued. ‘Then I studied again. In Göttingen. A glorious time,’ he added and drank a bit more.

‘Yes, it’s nice in Göttingen,’ the Old Man nodded. ‘I was apprenticed there to master joiner Radajsak in Bergstrasse. Do you know Bergstrasse, zebr—?’ He checked himself, blinked self-consciously, and corrected it to ‘Gerhard.’ He laughed. ‘Do you, Gerhard? You don’t mind my calling you Gerhard? Do you, Herr Lieutenant?’

We laughed. Gerhard laughed. The Old Man slapped his thighs and laughed very loudly. He filled his old pipe. This pipe had a lid. He had made it himself.

‘Do you know Bergstrasse?’ the Old Man went on. ‘There’s a fine tavern on the corner. “Holzauge” it’s called.’

‘I know that one. There was a girl there named Bertha,’ Gerhard cried in a voice which was breaking with enthusiasm at the thought of the girl named Bertha.

‘Was she fat?’ Porta asked with interest. He licked his lips at the thought of ‘a girl you can feel.’

‘Nah,’ Gerhard said. ‘She was slim as an eel.’

‘Ugh, what a yellow piece,’ Porta said. ‘Those narrow boards are nothing for me. I love to drown in rolls of fat. You want something you can put your hands on, boys. To feel the meat with your fists, there’s nothing to top it!’

‘What happened in the transit town where you were caught?’ Brandt asked. He spat at the snoring Heide, who protested aloud in his sleep. He must have been dreaming he’d become a duck, for he was making quacking sounds.

‘I was called to the counter where the NKVD people were sitting. A nice little man took me to his office, where he told me with a smile I was detained as an espionage suspect.

‘“But everything will be all right,” he said laughing, as if it were a huge joke.

‘He meant of course that whether I was shot or buried alive in Kolyma I would in either case be all right; and, granted, that is also a way of being all right. Why all that bother with long drawn-out lawsuits? A printed form that can be filled out by one man is considerably simpler, you know. I saw quite a bit of the Soviet Union, unbelievably much I saw, but through barbed wire. The first Russian word I learned was
davay
, faster. I remember it, because it was beaten into me with rifle butts. Comrades, there are two colors I have come to hate. The NKVD soldier’s green and the black of the SS guard.’

The Old Man nodded, removed the pipe from his mouth and puffed out a cloud of smoke.

‘Gerhard, friend, we understand you. A fur cap with a green cross can give us the shivers, too.’

The Old Man leaned back in his chair, put his feet on the table, closed his eyes and went on smoking in silence.

Stief continued: ‘At Boritsov we were supposed to procure food for ourselves. There was plenty of fish in the river running through camp.’

‘Where’s Boritsov?’ Stege asked.

‘Boritsov is far east, almost where the sun rises, in China.’ Gerhard thought a moment and passed his fingers through his tousled beard. ‘It
is
in China. A small wretched Soviet Republic.’

‘If there was enough food it couldn’t have been so bad,’ Brandt said. He took a big bite from a salami sausage.

Stief gave him a long look. He took a deep swig from the bottle of schnapps.

‘So, that’s what you think? Are you familiar with the red fish?’

The little Legionnaire leaned forward on the table and looked intensely at Stief.

‘The ones that give you worms?’

‘Yes, those that give you liver worms.’

The Legionnaire gave a long and pointed whistle.

‘They are damned sophisticated over there in Boritsov. So, you have liver worms, Lieutenant?’

Stief nodded. ‘Yes, and it hurts. You’re eaten up slowly from the inside. Those pills you get just prolong the pain.

‘After those red fish we got to the salt mines in Yazlanov. You know, those large salt wastes further down in Asia. From there we were sent to the Urals, to the locomotive works in Matrosov. Suddenly one day all the Germans, Austrians, Czechs, Poles and many more of Hitler’s children were assembled and sent to the distribution prison in Gorki. After a few days halt the westward journey continued. In Lvov we had the greatest surprise of our lives. There the SS and the NKVD had arranged a first-class barter in men. With yells and derisive laughter all of us from the East were handed over to the SS and all from the West to the NKVD. My friends, have you ever had the experience of sitting on your haunches for hours at a stretch?’

He took a cigarette Brandt flipped to him. He sucked the smoke deep down into his lungs. You could see how he enjoyed it. He closed his eyes a moment, then continued.

‘Have you been packed together in steel cars so tightly that half the car got suffocated? Have you experienced how soft a corpse is when you’ve stood on top of it for hours? This is the modern method of conveying living meat.’

We nodded. We were familiar with it, and we knew Dr Gerhard Stief from Hamburg, ex-Lieutenant of the infantry, didn’t exaggerate. Torgau – oh, yes, we were familiar with it. Lengries, Fort Plive. We, too, had experienced the educational methods of dictatorship.

Stief drank again. We all drank.

‘Hell!’ he cried. ‘I had the Iron Cross from 1914 and the Hohenzollern family order. An SS
Hauptsturmführer
grinned at me and said I could wipe my behind on Kaiser Wilhelm’s crap. Despite the fact that he wore both orders himself.’

‘He must’ve been an ass,’ the Old Man remarked.

‘Of course he was,’ the Legionnaire said. ‘Or he wouldn’t be in the SS.’

‘Before I came to the
Baukommando
I spent a long time in Stutthof and Majdanek,’ the old Jew went on. ‘And now I’m here with you.’

‘Did they treat you badly in Majdanek?’ Krause asked, as if he didn’t know.

‘They’re cruel in Majdanek. They are in most camps and prisons.’

‘Aren’t they the worst in the Soviet Union?’ the former SS man wanted to know.

‘Not really. Actually, the same kind of people are guards and prisoners in both places. In Camp 487 in the Urals we got
balanda
, prison camp soup. The same kind that people used to get in prison camps hundreds of years ago. Rotten, salty, stinking. The fish
tiulka
, which stinks even alive. That fish is born rotten. In Majdanek we were served bread filled with worms, iron and splinters of wood. Many prisoners choked on the things the bread was stuffed with. The NKVD whipped us with rifle butts and jabbed at us with bayonets or just used the
nagayka
, the horsewhip. The SS guards whipped us with the cat-o’-nine-tails and rubber truncheons. Both parties used a thin steel chain to break the kidneys. The NKVD mostly performed their executions by firing a Nagan at the nape of your neck. The SS were fondest of using a piece of rope on a butcher’s hook, with your toes just touching the ground. As you can see, you SS man, there isn’t a very great difference.’

He said this with a smile which betrayed the refined physician he once had been.

‘I am not in the SS,’ Krause protested.

A slight touch of sarcasm insinuated itself into Dr Stief’s dignified smile. ‘Many will say that when sometime here or in the hereafter accounts are to be settled.’

Porta growled ominously. ‘All SS men and NKVDs have volunteered. The fact that they later got cold feet is no excuse.’ He pointed at Krause. ‘You’ll always be an SS rat. The only reason we didn’t plug you a long time ago is because we’re going to give you up to see you broken on the wheel when we have our revolution. We’ve told you once and for all that you’re a swine, tolerated among decent people only because we have to tolerate you.’

Stief shook his head. ‘Why so bloodthirsty? He’s sure to be haunted by bad dreams when he gets old sometime . . .’

‘
If he
gets old,’ Porta cut in, giving Krause a dirty look.

‘. . . and is sitting alone. That’s far worse than getting hanged.’

‘Allah is wise. Allah does what’s right,’ the Legionnaire chanted, bowing toward the southeast.

‘
Voos is baschjot
,’ Dr Stief mumbled like an echo.

‘At Fort Plive we had to sit on a long board when we took a crap,’ Brandt said. ‘Anyone who fell into the pit would drown in his own and others’ shit. Many got drowned. The SS and the head-hunters made bets among themselves how long you could hold out before you sank.’

‘There’s a board like that in Majdanek, too,’ the old Jew nodded. ‘Many are getting choked to death also in
that
pit. A person who falls into it sinks slowly, as in a swamp. He vanishes to the gurgling sound of small air bubbles. When he’s gone it looks like boiling porridge.’

Tiny spat out part of a goose leg and took a slug from a bottle of Prague beer. ‘In Brückenkopf 3 below Torgau we had to piss at each other when we shit in our pants. The black beers gave us diarrhea.’

We looked at Tiny, astonished. It was the first time we’d heard a single word about his time in prison. We had no idea what he’d done or where he’d been.

He took a bite of the salami sausage, spat it out again quickly, dipped the sausage in a bowl of wine and stuck it in his mouth. He continued talking with his mouth full, which made it difficult to understand what he was saying.

‘An
U-Scharführer
from Totenkopf broke my arm in three places.’

He began picking his teeth with the point of his bayonet and spat out capers in all directions. Then he drank a little from the bowl in which he had dipped the sausage. ‘He tore off my little toe with a pair of pincers, a brand-new pair.’

Tiny drank a little more Prague beer. He got up, picked up a big armchair, lifted it over his head and banged it on the floor four or five times until it smashed to pieces. He kicked the broken bits. ‘That’s what I’ll do to that SS
U-Scharführer
when I find him. I know he’s on duty in a camp on the Weser.’

He broke into a grin which boded no good for that particular SS man from
Totenkopfsverband
.

‘In Lengries they bastinadoed us,’ I said. I recalled a Christmas Eve long ago under bare poplars and screeching crows, with SS
Obersturmführer
Schendrich commanding: ‘One, two, one, two!’ in a shrieking voice which broke with rapture when someone fainted. I didn’t say what I would do with Schendrich if we met. I hope we won’t ever meet.

‘In Fagen some of us were castrated for fun,’ the little Legionnaire said, clenching his fists around the handle of a hand grenade, his eyes flashing like the Moor’s when revenge is just around the corner.

‘In Gross Rosen 367 Jews were hanged head down,’ Stege said. ‘One of them had his nose cut off and given to the dog Max. That dog just loved human flesh. While he was eating the nose we had to sing: “Darling – I’ll see you no more.”’

‘When I returned home from Fort Zinna I tried to hang myself,’ the Old Man said.

We sat for a moment in silence. We knew from before that the Old Man had wanted to hang himself. His wife managed to cut him down in time. A clergyman friend took him in hand. The Old Man didn’t try to take his own life again.

‘When the war’s over,’ Gerhard Stief said, ‘I’ll invite you for beer to “The Half Rooster” on Hansaplatz.’

‘Great,’ Brandt cried. ‘We’ll meet in “The Half Rooster” and we’ll all of us stand beer!’

‘Dortmunder Export, a pump barrel for each,’ Stege laughed. ‘Yes, a whole barrel,’ he added excitedly.

We could almost smell that beer. We slapped each other’s shoulders and burst into an ecstatic yell over the Dortmunder Export we would drink in ‘The Half Rooster’.

‘Do you know “The Green Goat” in Albert Rolfgasse in Hamburg?’ Stief shouted enthusiastically above the uproar. ‘There you get the best meat balls and the best sauerbraten in the world.’

‘No, we don’t know that place,’ Stege laughed, ‘but if you’ll promise to show it to us, in return I’ll show you Lili’s saloon, the best birdcage in all Hamburg. One of the girls can do everything – just like a fakir girl. She’s said to have studied whoring at the Punjab pagoda in Raipur.’

‘We’ll wind up at Lili’s,’ the Old Man decided.

‘Any whores there?’ Tiny asked through the noise.

‘Oceans of them,’ Stege affirmed.

‘Ah, if only the war was over,’ Tiny sighed, ‘so we could set out right away.’

‘Afterward we’ll hit the town and raise hell,’ Porta shouted jubilantly. ‘We’ll pick a fight with every lousy bum we meet and have a crack at all the girls.’

Stief said: ‘We only have to watch out we don’t get stuck at “The Half Rooster”. It’s so scandalously pleasant there, and after two Dortmunders you know you get thirsty.’

‘Let’s have a game of
mariage
or blackjack,’ said Bauer, the big butcher from Hanover who always was afraid before an attack. He said one should carefully avoid taking any chances. Chance was a stupid swine. He claimed he had lost out on a lot of things by becoming a soldier.

‘I don’t want any cross,’ he said, ‘gold, iron or wood. Ten hours of work in a good sausage factory under a reasonable foreman, a good piece of nookie at night, and a game of
mariage
and beer with a couple of chums after knock-off time, that’s all I’d ask for.’