Comrades of War (20 page)

The Legionnaire looked at her. He looked at her a good while. The long knife scar running from his forehead straight across his nose flamed red – it seemed as if the blood would burst through the thin skin. He ground out his half-smoked cigarette in a saucer filled with salt sticks.

There was a rustle at the revolving door. It came from the curtain in front of the cloakroom, a beaded curtain with threaded shells like those seen in southern Spain and in the Philippines. A boatswain had given it as a present to Aunt Dora a very long time ago. He later went down with the battleship
Bismarck
in the North Atlantic.

One night, that boatswain had bellowed into a Gestapo’s face:

‘I don’t give a damn about you or Adolf either!’

With that he had flung a glass into the face of the head-hunter, who drew his pistol. Aunt Dora, who’d been standing somewhat in the background, swung a stocking filled with rocks. A hollow thud. Two days later the Gestapo was found in a ditch at the far end of Harburg.

Next day the boatswain sailed off on his tramp. When he returned home again, he brought Aunt Dora the string of pearls with the shells. It was hung like a curtain before the cloakroom door. While the two of them were putting it up Aunt Dora stepped through a cane-bottomed chair. They had quite a laugh over it. Then each of them put away a quart.

The boatswain went to Kiel. He’d just been drafted. This was in 1939. Aunt Dora saw him once more before he set out to sea in the battleship named for the statesman.

The boatswain died cursing and screaming in the ice-cold water. A seagull ate his eyes, some mackerel a bit of his burnt leg.

‘Damned crowd!’ were the last words he yelled (in English) before he died.

The Legionnaire took another small draft of beer.

‘So that’s what you think?’ He said this in a strangely low voice.

‘Alfred,’ Aunt Dora said in a remarkably gentle voice hard to associate with her. ‘Stay with me. You may snooze in bed all day and get drunk as often as you like. In fact, once you’ve chucked your uniform, you won’t have to be sober for a moment more in all the rest of your life.’

Did tears glitter in the eyes of that brutal woman – or was it merely an optical illusion? Those eyes, clear as water and hard as a cobra’s just before it sinks its teeth into a rabbit. Yes, Aunt Dora wept. She grasped Alfred Kalb’s hand. He returned her grasp.

The two resembled each other. The saloon-keeper and the veteran who could boast of fifteen years in the African desert.

A petty officer came over to the table. ‘How mysterious you are,’ he grinned drunkenly and nudged Aunt Dora.

The Legionnaire jumped up and hit him to the floor with one stroke. He kicked him in the face and sat down again.

‘Dora, old girl,’ he whispered intimately. ‘Let’s be grown up and not start anything silly. You and I, we know. No rose-colored nonsense for us. You belong here among sluts, tramps and booze and I in the desert with a tommy gun across my shoulder. But once we’ve grown real old and tired, we’ll send each other a postcard and meet. Then we’ll find a little place where we can buy a bar with only seven stools.’

Aunt Dora took a deep breath and looked loving at him.

‘Alfred, the two of us are never going to get a bar with seven stools. One day you’ll suffocate in red sand while all of your filthy blood is being drained off, and I’ll die from the DTs.’

Trude, the Berlin girl, came up to them and whispered something to Aunt Dora.

‘Go to hell,’ she snarled. ‘Can’t you see I’m busy!’

‘Yes, but it’s red Bernard,’ Trude justified herself.

‘I don’t care a damn,’ Aunt Dora cried and hurled her glass after Trude, who hurriedly withdrew.

The Legionnaire got up, brought over a couple of bottles and mixed something. He poured out a beer glass of it for Aunt Dora.

‘Drink, girl. All of us have the war tantrums. Why should you go scot-free?’

An air-raid siren started hooting. Others tuned into chorus.

‘Alert,’ some guest said. As if we didn’t know.

Several left Wind Force 11. An office clerk looking like a petty embezzler said he wanted to get home before they came. Most of us didn’t make a move and went on drinking. Soldiers as well as civilians. Girls and ladies.

A dark-blonde lady inquired about shelters. She looked good, wore high-heeled shoes and a close-fitting knee-length skirt. Her stockings were slightly grayish. Very sheer. She wasn’t a common barfly.

The first bombs hit. A whole series of explosions shook the house. Flak began booming away. We could easily make out the sound of the high-altitude shells exploding.

‘Can you hear the Tommies?’ someone asked.

We listened. Yes, we could hear them. Singing treble, the heavy bombers were circling over Hamburg.

‘Oh, shove the Tommies up your ass!’ bawled a corporal with the Order of the Frozen Flesh on his breast. ‘You should have a look at Ivan’s combat pilots. Then you might learn something, you hick-town heroes!’

‘Who’re you calling a hick-town hero?’ an NCO shouted and got up menacingly. His entire breast was plastered with jingling combat medals. His nose was missing. The hole was covered up with a black flap.

‘Where can we take shelter?’ the dark-blonde lady called.

‘Here,’ someone laughed, knocking an empty bar stool.

A new series of bombs hit the houses and streets. A sailor with a U-boat campaign ribbon set up a grin.

‘I bet they’re shitting in their pants now!’ He stuck his hand under a girl’s dress.

The girl put her arm around his neck and whispered: ‘Sailor, you mustn’t!’ But she let him do it anyway.

The lady who wished to take shelter walked out, followed by a nervous, somewhat corpulent gentleman.

A thundering crash rocked the house, which groaned like a wounded animal. The electric light blinked ominously.

‘That was quite a raindrop,’ the U-boat sailor laughed. He bent the girl back over the counter. She squealed loudly.

The lady and the corpulent gentleman came back out of breath. They seemed to apologize as they wiped their feet on the mat.

‘It’s terrible. They’re dropping bombs,’ she panted excitedly.

She looked sweet. Her hair was disheveled and red spots of fear were on her cheeks. She obviously wasn’t on familiar terms with death yet.

‘Oh, bombs, really?’ Aunt Dora jeered. ‘Damned if I didn’t think they were dropping flowers on us.’

The lady sat down on an empty bar stool. A strip of naked flesh was exposed above her gray stocking. She glanced around bewildered. The corpulent man sat on a chair in the middle of the room, puffing anxiously.

The sailor pushed his girl aside and swaggered up to the lady. The long band around his cap had disappeared. The girl had probably torn it off.

Without saying a word he slipped a big hand up her legs. Offended, she cried out and pulled her skirt over her knees. But it immediately slipped back again because of the tall bar stool. The sailor swayed. His brown eyes smiled.

‘Leave my wife alone!’ the corpulent gentleman threatened, getting up.

The rest of us watched. His wife! Imagine taking your wife to this place. He must be an imbecile.

The sailor didn’t see him. He bent over the lady once more and whispered something about ‘bed.’

‘Leave my wife alone, sailor,’ the corpulent man shouted indignantly.

‘Why?’ the sailor asked curiously.

‘Because she’s my wife!’

‘Is that your husband?’ the sailor asked skeptically, again leaning over the lady.

‘Yes, it’s my husband. And now, leave me alone. I’m not at all interested in you.’

‘The interest will come after we know each other a little better. I’m crazy about married pieces!’

The corpulent man seized the sailor’s arm. ‘Haven’t I told you she’s my wife!’

‘Well, so what?’ grinned the sailor, who was quite drunk. ‘I’ve made up my mind to go to bed with your wife. Can’t you grasp that, brother?’ He put his hand up higher under the lady’s dress. She hit out at him furiously. He guffawed, took a long swig of beer and shouted: ‘You’re just my number. There’s nothing as interesting as a little resistance, and tomorrow I glide out to sea on U-189!’ He made a gesture of embrace and whispered intimately, ‘It’s my last trip!’

Another crash caused the ceiling plaster to sift down upon us like fine snow.

The U-boat sailor looked up. He had hunched up his shoulders. He smiled contentedly.

‘That piece of candy wasn’t far away. But it won’t hit me. I’ll shortly be going on my last voyage. A fortune-teller told me I’m going to be suffocated in the front torpedo room. U-189 is a rotten heap. And the commander, Lieutenant von Grawitz, is a pile of shit!’ He looked across at the Legionnaire. ‘Hey, you panzer coolie with the smashed face, do you know that pile of shit von Grawitz? A man who wears the Knight’s Cross about his ostrich neck as a token of gratitude for all those he has sloshed down in the North Atlantic.’

‘Shut up,’ the Legionnaire said and continued his mumbled conversation with Aunt Dora. He was in the middle of a lengthy description of shark-fin soup as served in Damascus.

When the bomb exploded, the corpulent gentleman had flopped onto a chair. Now he got up and skipped in short steps up to his wife and the sailor. He puffed himself up before him, trying to appear awe-inspiring. The sailor, who was standing with a full glass of beer in his hand, looked curiously at the pasty-faced manikin.

‘I order you to leave my wife alone,’ he cackled. ‘And to offer an apology immediately.’ His fists were clenched.

‘
Merde, est-ce-que c’est possible
? The imbecile wants to take on the merman,’ the Legionnaire laughed.

‘What’s that to us?’ Aunt Dora said and blew away a thick cloud of smoke. ‘Trude, another keg!’

The sailor flung his beer at the corpulent man’s head, bent down over the woman and kissed her violently. The man staggered. Then he aimed a blow at the sailor and hit him on the jaw, while reeling off a string of abuse that no one could understand.

His wife screamed. He swung his arm and hit the sailor again, knocking over his new beer, a double ginger-beer, which was hard to get. This made the sailor mad. He cried ‘sabotage’ and sent the corpulent gentleman to the floor with a kick in the belly.

He received another glass of beer, but not ginger-beer. Then he roughly embraced the lady, bent her back and kissed her noisily. She kicked, and her skirt slipped up.

‘Magnificent legs,’ cried an infantry sergeant and clapped his hands. ‘Chuck her onto the counter, sailor, and take what you want! You’ll see, she’ll clap her paws about your hips like the girls in Tripolis.’

The husband was again on his feet. He was raving. He grabbed a chair and tried to smash it against the U-boat man’s head, but instead he hit his wife, who collapsed without a sound and slid to the floor like a rubber doll.

The sailor stepped over her and pulled down the edges of his tight-fitting dark blue blouse. He stoked up and shot toward the corpulent man like a torpedo boat.

‘Damn it, man, now you’re going to get a spanking,’ the sailor said and gave the corpulent fellow a searing blow behind the ear. He hit the floor face down.

The Belgian threw him into the street.

‘Really, what a stupid pig,’ the U-boat man said. He lifted the lady onto the counter. ‘Hitting a lady!’

One leg dangled over the edge.

‘Now you can take her!’ the infantry sergeant cried. ‘Let’s see what you’ve got in you!’

‘Oh shut up, you swine,’ Aunt Dora fumed.

‘Can’t he take her?’ the sergeant asked, looking into our niche from the adjacent one where he was sitting. He was in his shirtsleeves. Everything was sagging on him. About his forehead he had a big bandage, very white. He smelled of an army hospital and beer.

A Schupo came stumbling through the door.

The Belgian glanced across at Aunt Dora, but as she didn’t give any danger signal, he sat on, pretending he was asleep. Under his chair lay a stocking filled with sand.

‘All Kirchenallee is on fire,’ the policeman said. ‘There won’t be a bean left.’

He removed his helmet. He was very pale and had black stripes across his face. His uniform smelled of smoke.

‘Good Lord, how it’s burning!’ he said and ordered a double, which he finished in one gulp. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand: ‘A fat fellow is lying blubbering in the street outside. Is it someone you threw out?’

He didn’t wait for an answer, but pointed at the lady lying on the counter, moaning and tossing her head.

‘Did she get hit over the head?’

‘So you’re curious, huh?’ the sergeant cried, tottering to his feet. ‘Would you like to fight me, cop?’

‘Goodness, no,’ the policeman answered and again wiped himself with the back of his hand. Soot was now daubed all over his face, and he looked very grimy.

‘You’re a little rat,’ the sergeant said. He aimed a blow at him, but missed.

‘Go and sit down now, infantryman, will you,’ came patiently from the policeman. ‘Christ, how it’s burning,’ he went on and turned around. ‘Give me another beer, Trude. You get so thirsty from all that smoke.’

A girl spat on the floor in front of him. ‘You turd,’ she said and spat again.

The Schupo ignored it.

‘She says you’re a turd,’ the infantry sergeant grinned. ‘And do you know what I say?’ he jeered, itching for a fight. ‘You’re a stupid ox. No, you’re something far worse than that.’ He flung his arms around and nodded with conviction. ‘You’re a real ass-kisser, sweetening up those Nazi piles of shit. Will you fight me now?’

‘Go away, infantryman. I don’t strike a wounded man.’

The sergeant swayed and hit out at the policeman. He lost his balance and fell against the bar. Trude gave him a push and he fell to the floor.

He managed to get up, though with great difficulty, grabbed a bottle and slammed it over the policeman’s head. The policeman jumped back with a roar, pulled out his pistol and cried frantically: ‘What the hell, are you crazy?’

‘Yes,’ the sergeant guffawed. ‘I’m raving mad!’

He rummaged about in his pockets and pulled out a piece of paper which he thrust under the nose of the Schupo. The latter exclaimed in wonder: ‘What the . . .’ He smeared the blood over his whole head. ‘A game license! An honest-to-goodness game license! That’s your luck. If you hadn’t had that game license, you’d have been dead now. Through! I’d have plugged you straight between the eyes.’