Court Martial (42 page)

'You couldn't throw a hand-grenade in here from over there,' says Barcelona, measuring the distance to the potato trench with a knowledgeable eye.

'He could crawl forward and get into range,' says the Old Man, worriedly.

'
Il est con
,' says the Legionnaire. 'If he leaves the trench we've
got
him! He can't be that crazy -
yet
!'

'What about annoying him so as to make him shoot off all his ammo?' suggests Gregor. 'He can't have a lot with him.'

'Then I'll pick 'im up easy as the devil pickin' up a parson sittin' on the pot on a Easter Sunday,' Tiny laughs, noisily.

'Maybe that's not a bad idea,' says the Old Man, thoughtfully.

A grenade explodes with a sharp bang, some way in front of our position, and throws snow through the windows.

One by one we run from the door and move from one wall of snow to the other to make him waste his ammunition. As soon as one of us is under cover the next man starts running, but the commissar continues firing like mad.

'Let's stop this nonsense,' says Medical Unteroffizier Leth, when we have been moving around between the snow walls for a while. 'I've been a nurse in an asylum and I know how to treat madmen. Got a broom?' he asks, when we are all safely inside the bar-room.

Sofija comes running eagerly with a besom.

'Just the thing,' smiles Leth, with satisfaction. 'We used 'em in the asylum to knock some sense into 'em. I've never met a loony yet who wasn't scared of one of these. Give me one of those Russian hats, and I'll show you how to fix a bloke who's gone off his head.'

Yorgi hands him a green fur cap with a tall, pointed crown.

'Hey, you there,' shouts Leth, when he is outside. 'Drop that gun and come over here! If you don't I'll come up and give you a real beatin' with this broom here!
Na doma.
62
'

For a moment there is a heavy silence, and it seems as if the mad commissar does not really know what to believe.

Leth walks slowly across the village square and threatens him with the broom.

'Come on down here, you crazy devil,' he yells, his voice echoing back from the snowy walls. 'Or I'll be over and warm your back with this broom!'

'Lies and propaganda, you wicked German,' answers Gregorij from the potato pit. 'You are a devil, and neither heaven nor hell will have anything to do with you!'

'Come back,' shouts Gregor, nervously. 'He's mad as
a
hatter!'

'Don't try to teach your grandmother to suck eggs,' shouts Leth over his shoulder. 'I've been specially trained to deal with German loonies, and I know what I'm doing!'

He approaches the potato trench, step by step, swinging the broom round his head.

Suddenly the machine-pistol rattles out a long snarling burst.

Leth spins round like a top. It looks at first as if he is turning to come back to us, but then he goes down like a sack of potatoes. The snow rises in a cloud around his body.

'
Now
do you understand who it is you're up against? shouts the commissar, triumphantly. He emits a long peal of crazy laughter, and now none of us can doubt that the man really is insane. 'Men like me are impervious to both fire and water! I'm that tough I could smash a rock to dust just by sitting on it!'

'I'm not standing for this any longer,' roars Barcelona, angrily, emptying his magazine in one long rattling burst.

The mad Gregorij returns his fire immediately. Two hand-grenades fall, not far from the door.

'He must be superhuman,' I cry, in amazement. 'No normal man can throw that far.'

'In the name of all the devils, and by the holy name of Christ's body, I'm coming down there to flay your hides off!'

Again the Mpi chatters. One of the bullets goes through Porta's hat.

'This can't go on,' says the Old Man, with decision. 'Who'll volunteer to take him?'

'Think we've got shit in our heads?' asks Gregor, in angry indignation.

'One bloody madman with a machine-pistol, and he's holdin' up an entire section!' shouts Barcelona, bringing his first down on the table in impotent rage.

The mirror with the angel on it smashes to pieces, and falls from the wall, as another burst crashes through the broken windows.

'That's the limit,' screams Shenja, furiously. 'That mad shies gonna get to know Shenja from Odessa better! Gimme one o' them Hitler saws!'

Porta hands her a Schmeisser and a bag of magazines. She is so angry that froth rings her mouth and nose. She goes out of the door like a rocket.

'So long, love! Thanks for dropping in!' Porta shouts after her. 'I'll plant three lilies on your grave!'

She zigzags up the hill. The Legionnaire gives her covering fire with the LMG. Tracer makes an umbrella over the potato trench. Suddenly the madman comes into view on the left of the long pit, and
sends
a burst at Shenja. Her own Mpi goes off like a runaway rattle.

We send a concentrated fire from windows and doors.

The rain of bullets throws him up into the air. He falls backwards, then staggers to his feet again, but before he can fire Shenja is beside him. Now it seems as if
she
has gone mad. She stands over him, like a statue, with straddled legs, and fires down into his body.

'If
she
goes round the bend now,' cites Gregor, worriedly, 'then I'm leaving!'

She stops firing, swings the Mpi on to her shoulder as if she were carrying a spade, and descends the hill with long measured strides.

'That's what the Amazons must have looked like in the old days when they marched back in triumph after a great victory,' laughs the Old Man.

'Anybody say anything about the weaker sex?' asks Porta.

'Call Mum here any time!' says Shenja, proudly, handing Porta back the Schmeisser and thanking him for the loan of it.

Slowly the inn fills up with villagers come to have a look at the Germans. As Shenja's stocks are depleted feelings of friendship grow warmer.

To mark the occasion, the stuffed bear in the chimney corner is wearing a German steel helmet.

Porta takes a balalaika from the wall.

'That was with my father in Siberia,' Shenja tells him.

'Well now,' says Porta, trying the strings.

'Can you play it?' she asks.

'Too true I can,' he answers, pressing it to his side.

The first notes are soft and mellow. Then they become wild as the drumming of Cossack horses crossing the steppe. He wipes his hands on his trousers, and begins to play the clown with the instrument, in Kalmuk style.

Tiny knocks out his mouthorgan. Porta sings in a high voice:

'Einmal aber warden Glaser klingen,
denn zu Ende geht ja jeder Krieg.'
63

Soon the inn is shaking to the dancing of the Russians. Mischa springs so high into the air that he splits open his head on a beam. Gregor breaks a finger learning to turn a somersault. Porta gets a crick in the neck when Fjedor persuades him to try jumping over a table with his feet together.

'As soon as this war's over,' Tiny tells Sofija, stroking the insides of her thigh, 'this honourable German uniform of mine goes straight on the muck-pile, and I step proudly into the ranks of the scoundrelly civvies again.'

'Mind you're not disappointed,' laughs Gregor. 'Civilian life's a lot more complicated'n you think it is. You can't go about
there
with your brain shut off an' a set of regulations stuck on your forehead. Life in the Army gets simpler and more straightforward the more stars and braid you've picked up!'

'What does Germany look like?' asks Yorgi, inquisitively.

'Ruins! No matter where you look,' answers Porta, 'and everybody goes round in the same standard clothes, that've been turned God knows how often. A couple of times a year Adolf tells us that he now has victory in his pocket!'

'There's a lot as loses their nuts, too,' explains Tiny, from the far end of the table. 'Them's the ones as don't take the law too seriously, and go on the pinch durin' the blackout!'

'How will it all end?' sighs Dimitri. 'Poltava lies also in ruins.'

'It'll end with one of us losing the war and the winners taking all the loot,' decides Porta, largely.

'If you Germans lose the war you will not be allowed to have an Army any more,' predicts Fjedor, darkly, patting a Schmeisser.

That'd be bad,' Porta admits, with a false smile. 'The German. Army is for us something holy. Like the Church! Prayers on Sunday and drill on Monday. We always close out the week with a parade and start it again with prayers and weapon drill!'

'Hear, hear!' yells Heide, raising his arm. He is too drunk to understand Porta's irony.

'The Army is a gift from God to the German people,' hiccoughs Gregor, saluting the stuffed bear.

'We Prusians are born to the practice of war,' shouts Heide, proudly, raising his arm again. 'God created the uniform and the rifle especially for our use.'

'In the same way as he created the spade and the muck-rake for the Russians,' grins Porta, jovially. 'That German God certainly does know what he's doing!'

'Don't worry about losing the war,' shouts Andrej, lifting his glass to Barcelona. 'If you do, then we Russians will join you and fix our present allies. Together we could beat the rest of the world in no time!'

'Yes, we
do
have a lot in common,' says Porta, thoughtfully, 'particularly holiness and cruelty.'

'Should we get into difficulties,' shouts Gregor, with the voice of a General, 'we will not hesitate to take cruel and unusual methods of warfare into use. We shall mobilize all German and Russian lice, infect them with spotted typhus and throw them at the heads of the Americans.
That
will make them lose the desire to force our peace-loving peoples into making more wars.'

'We could also collect rats from the ruins and from the graveyards of former wars,' suggests Porta, 'and, when he had infected them with all kinds of shit and corruption, send them as gift parcels to our hateful enemies, who are consciencelessly killing our women and children.'

'Yes, we Germans and Russians know how to make other nationalities keep in line all right,' shouts Barcelona, above the noise.

'Helmets off for prayers!' hiccoughs Porta, crawling up on a table. 'We must pray to God to help us finish this World War as soon as possible, so we can get a new one started!'

The village patriach, who is nothing but skin and bones, says he can remember the Crimean War, where some fool of an English general slaughtered his own cavalry, and if he thinks really hard he can remember Napoleon's entry into Moscow.

'It was a brave sight,' he says, quietly. 'What a lot of horses they had with them. Napoleon was riding on a white one!'

'Snow camouflage, I suppose!' says Tiny.

'Do you shoot with cannons in this war?' the ancient asks Porta.

'We do set one off now and then,' admits Porta.

'Do you think, perhaps, one day, a man could see how one of those things works?' asks the old fellow in his thin, reedy voice.

'You can come with us when we leave,' suggests Porta.

'We've got a cannon here,' reveals the aged man, with shining eyes. He smacks his toothless gums together gleefully. 'Somebody forgot it here, shortly after the Revolution, and we've kept it hidden ever since.'

'Why don't you try to fire it then?' asks Tiny. 'No powder, maybe?'

'
Yes, yes
!' boasts the village patriach. 'A lot of it, of all kinds.'

'Where
is
this shootin' iron you're talkin' about?' asks Tiny, interestedly. He gives Sofija a smack on the backside which sends her flying into the arms of Fjedor.

'In the reindeer stables, hidden in the straw,' chuckles the old peasant.

'Let's go and look it over,' suggests Tiny.

'Yes, let us do that,' the ancient man nods, obviously pleased. 'I have taken part in two or three wars, but I have never seen a cannon fired, and now that I am over a hundred years old I would like to see it before I die.'

'When were you born?' asks Porta.

'More than one hundred years ago,' answers the aged peasant, with a happy smile.

As they force their way through the snow on their way to the reindeer shed, the peasant confides to them that Prince Nicholas had once tipped him five roubles. In those days a whole month's pay.

'The prince was a good and holy man,' he sighs.

'Yes, he had a heart of gold,' smiles Porta, pleasantly. 'His tactical errors in handling the Imperial Army can't have cost more than a few million Russians their lives.'

'Did you know him?' asks the aged man, interestedly, looking with awe at Porta.

'No, I was never lucky enough to,' answers Porta. 'If I had I'd probably have ended in a mass-grave.'

In concert they manage to dig up a 104-mm Austrian field-gun.

'She's an old 'un,' confirms Porta, when they have dragged the gun free of the straw and placed it in position. 'Could blow to bits and take our arses with it, easy!'

Tiny opens the breach with a crash, and examines the interior of the barrel with an experienced air.

Wouldn't fancy goin' on inspection with this baby,' he grins. Where do you keep the powder?' Porta asks the old fellow, who is in transports of joy and expectation.

'Under the straw,' he wheezes. 'It's not dangerous, is it?' he asks as they roll the first shells over to the gun.

'Not when you know what you're about,' boasts Tiny, pushing a shell into the breach chamber.

'We'll take load three,' says Porta, knowledgeably. 'That'll make 'em drop their beers with fright down at the inn!'

Tiny pushes the charge home.

'Hold on to your balls or they might go with it,' says Porta, turning the elevating wheel.

The long, dusty gun-barrel rises, and points towards the clouds.

'Let me have first go at it,' says Tiny, sitting in the gunner's seat.

'Go on then,' grins Porta, pulling the old peasant with him, behind a huge rock. 'Hold on to your hat,' he says, warningly, forcing him down under cover.