Crack of Doom (2 page)

He abandoned his idle brooding and had his orderly bring him his meal. Afterward he decided to take a stroll through the town.

Kosice disappointed him. It was a town like all the others between the Bug and the Dniester that he had seen in the last months: grey houses with small windows reflecting the winter sky.

As he walked he inhaled deep draughts of the cold, clear winter air. His gaze stayed on the gently rising hills, thickly wooded to their highest points. He loved this land with its deep valleys and the bizarre shapes of its seemingly endless chain of sheer mountains—stretching one behind the other as far as the horizon, with the vault of a dark December sky above them. There was a silence full of melancholy hanging over the whole scene, a palpable sadness; and something of that in himself too when he suddenly remembered that in two days it would be Christmas. For the sixth time in this war, and still no . . . but yes, the end
was
in sight. He could not share Giesinger's optimism; he was not much impressed by the offensive in the Ardennes. His mathematically trained brain refused to be taken in by the latest bulletins of German successes. The respective weights remained the same, and trivial shifts made no difference now on the scales: there was no longer any doubt about the result.

Deep in thought, he crossed a road and almost bumped into another man, who muttered an apology, started, and then quickly turned his face away. But Schmitt had already recognized that sharp profile with the high cheekbones and the deep scar running from the right eyebrow almost down to the chin. Schmitt gripped him firmly by the arm.

"Stop," he said sharply. "Where do you think you're going, Sergeant Kolodzi?"

The man was silent. Schmitt released his arm and took a step back. "I asked you a question," he said. His voice became still sharper. "Lost your tongue? Didn't you know I'd expressly forbidden any wandering around?"

"Yes, I heard it from Lieutenant Menges," answered Kolodzi. He spoke slowly, rather slurring his words. Since Lieutenant Jung had fallen at Turka, he had commanded the sixth company. He had held the post down excellently, and Schmitt was sorry to have to talk to him like this. But the place where they were standing was a good five hundred yards from Kolodzi's billet. Schmitt noticed that some civilians had stopped and were looking at them. "Come on," he ordered tersely. They walked a bit further, and Schmitt asked: "Were you coming to see me?"

"No, sir," said Kolodzi.

"Too bad—you've just missed a chance. Where were you going then?"

Kolodzi stopped and looked down the street. "To visit my mother," he said curtly.

"Your mother?" said Schmitt in amazement.

Kolodzi nodded. "I live here."

"Here?"

"Yes."

"In KoSice?"

"In Kosice."

Schmitt stared at him incredulously. "Why didn't you tell me that before?"

"You didn't ask me, sir."

"Don't be impertinent," said Schmitt. He reflected. "All right," he said, "show me the house where you live. In case I need you I've got to know where to find you."

The sergeant began to walk fast, and Schmitt had some difficulty in keeping up with him. On the way Schmitt pointed to a building which stood out above the houses in front of it. "What's that?"

"The town theatre," Kolodzi answered.

"And that over there?"

Kolodzi's eyes followed Schmitt's outstretched hand. "The Dominican Church," he said moodily.

Schmitt looked in his face. "You meant to desert."

"If I'd meant to do that, I'd have done it long ago."

"Why didn't you?"

"Why didn't I." Kolodzi's face twisted to a grimace. He waited till they came to the next crossroads. There he pointed left with his chin. "Do you see the tree?" "What about it?"

"They hanged my father from it."

Schmitt stared at him. "Your father?"

"Yes."

"Who's they?"

"The Czechs," said Kolodzi quietly, and walked on.

Schmitt ran after him in bewilderment. "Why?"

"Just for the fun of it. He happened to be a Nazi."

"Are you one too?"

"Not me. But later on, when the war got going, I joined up. They won't forgive me for that here. They'd hang me just the same way the first chance they had."

Schmitt had to digest all this. After a pause he asked: "When did this happen to your father?"

"Thirty-eight, before we became Hungarian again."

"And they'd still hang you today?"

"There are more Czechs here than anything else. You don't know the local conditions."

"I certainly don't," Schmitt admitted. Then he said: "Kolodzi sounds Polish."

"Yes, sir. After her first husband's death my grandmother married a Pole with German nationality. Then my father married a German woman."

"Complicated," observed Schmitt.

Kolodzi gave a dry laugh. "There are lots like it here. Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Austrians, Russians, all in a jumble. Volksdeutsch!" he concluded bitterly, and pointed to a house. "This is where I live. Over there."

Schmitt looked at the building. It had a mean and neglected appearance.

"Seventeenth century house," declared Kolodzi sardonically. When Schmitt made no comment, he asked: "How long, sir . . ."

Schmitt considered. "Let's say till tomorrow morning. Assuming I don't need you earlier, of course. If I do, I'll send someone for you."

"Thank you, sir."

Kolodzi crossed the road, and went into the house. For a moment Schmitt stared thoughtfully after the sergeant. Then he returned to his quarters.

Kolodzi went up a few steps from the hall and opened the door of a room. There was his mother, still sitting by the window. He took off his belt and put it on the table, then pulled a second chair up and sat down so near her that she couldn't help seeing him; their knees were touching. Yet she did not move. After gazing at her for a long while, Kolodzi gently took hold of her hands, which were lying in her lap, and said: "How are you, Mother?"

She raised her head a little; now he could look right into her face, and he thought: how old she's grown. For a second he felt her looking
at
him, but immediately afterward she was looking right through him again like glass. He went on sitting by her till dusk, still clasping her hands. She took no notice of him and kept her eyes on the window, which framed a piece of grey winter sky, gradually being swallowed by the night. Kolodzi watched the darkness eating black holes into his mother's face, and he heard her quiet breathing. As always, seeing her before him in all her helplessness and decay, he began to reproach himself. Things might have turned out differently if only he'd stayed with her. But then he hadn't been able to stand it any more, having her sit there by the window day and night waiting for father, having to watch the grief affect her brain until she failed to recognize her surroundings.

He left the room. It was pitch dark in the hall. He felt his way up a staircase and opened another door. The room he entered smelled stuffy. He groped for a lamp and lit it. Hesitating, as if afraid of a shock, he looked round the room. In the left-hand corner stood a wardrobe; on the other side was a bed with a book shelf next to it; and over that there was a picture which showed a young man with a scar on his face going from the right eyebrow almost to the chin: it was a portrait of himself, Stefan Kolodzi. He got the scar in a fight when he was twenty-five. He and Maria had been sitting in an inn, and two drunken lumberjacks tried to kiss her; when he stopped them, one of them went wild and drew a knife. As he recalled this now, he could feel the scar itching and smarting, even though nearly eight years had passed. He had known Maria all that time.

She was still almost a child then, only seventeen, and they had wanted to marry early. But the business with father happened, and because of it Stefan's boss had immediately sacked him. Soon afterward KoSice became Hungarian, but even then the chances of another job were barred to the son of an anarchist, as the Czechs called his father. Orid Krasko, Maria's father, once said: "Anyone in Kosice who falls out with the Czechs has fallen out with the whole place." There was a good deal of truth in that, and things hadn't changed during the period of Hungarian rule. As Krasko had also said, "The Czechs will return."

Stefan had never bothered much with politics, and he remembered all the quarrels about that between him and his father. "There'll be no peace in this hell kettle till we're all German," his father maintained. He had joined an officially proscribed movement which sympathized with the Germans and wanted to make Kosice into a self-governing German colony; neither Stefan's mother nor Maria's father could talk him out of these crazy ideas. One day he gave up his job, and from then on he was often away for weeks on end. "With friends in Olmutz," he would sometimes explain—till that dreadful day. After that, when his mother got worse and worse, Stefan volunteered for the German army, although Maria opposed it. But he had told her: "When the wars over, we can live in peace. Till then it's better I make myself scarce round here. One's got to take one's stand somewhere, and I prefer the Germans to the Czechs."

He was so deep in his thoughts that he failed to hear the door opening behind him. It was a suppressed cry that first made him turn round. A girl was standing in the doorway looking at him in breathless amazement. Her thin, beautiful face went first red and then pale. Kolodzi took a step towards her. "Good evening, Maria." The girl ran over to him, flinging her arms round his neck. "Stefan," she murmured, "Stefan, Stefan." He kissed her mouth and her eyes. "Stefan," she said again, laughing and crying at the same time. He drew her over to the bed, pressed her down on the pillows, and gazed at her. She was wearing a dark dress that was a little short for her and only came down to her knees; thick woolen stockings covered her slim legs.

She smiled through her tears. "It's stupid of me, but I still can't believe it. Where have you come from, why didn't you write to me, have you got leave?"

"What a lot of questions at once!" He sat down by her side. "I'd have gone to you now. I didn't write to you because till yesterday evening I didn't know myself whether I'd be able to come home. We're stationed here."

She gave a cry of surprise. "You're stationed here?"

"Yes, but not for long, perhaps only till tomorrow."

She started. "Only till tomorrow!"

"Maybe longer, though. Do you still come every evening?"

"Your mother," she said, and then broke off.

"I know. She's in a bad way. She didn't recognize me. Has she never spoken of me?"

"Oh yes. Only a few days ago she asked me if . . ."

"Yes?"

She reached for his hands. "She asked me if I'd taken you some fresh flowers."

"Flowers?"

"Yes, she thinks ... she believes you're dead."

He stared at the floor. "What does she do when she isn't sitting at the window?"

"She stays in bed. She's never got over her last stroke. She can't walk any more."

"So you've got to cope with that too," said Kolodzi. She put her hand over his mouth. "Please don't, Stefan. I'm glad to do it," she said hastily. "I must go now and buy some things to eat, otherwise the shops will be shut. And you could make a fire while I'm gone. It's too cold in here."

"Too cold for what?" he asked. She blushed, kissed him and got up. "Oh, I'm so happy, Stefan. I just can't tell you how happy I am," she said and ran to the door.

The fire was not yet burning properly when she returned. She put her shopping bag on the table, asked: "Are you hungry?" and put two plates on the table. "I've got some sausage," she said, "made of horse meat, but it tastes good. The bread's already stale, though; still, one's glad to get any at all. Would you like any tea?"

"No."

"No tea?"

He shook his head, without taking his eyes off her. She came over to him and sat on his knees. "What
would
you like then?"

"You," he said, and carried her to the bed. "There are worse things than dry bread, horse meat sausage and no tea."

"What sort of things?"

"A year and a half without you. It feels to me like half a lifetime. Does it feel the same to you?"

She nodded, pressing her face against his chest. "Wait," she said.

He watched her pull up her dress and roll down the thick woolen stockings. He looked at her long auburn hair beneath him. "How brown you are," he said.

She laughed. "And yet I've hardly been in the sun, brown doesn't suit me. Wait, my shoes, and don't tear my dress, it's my last."

"I'll buy you lots of dresses later on."

"How many?"

"A dozen or two—as many as you like."

"What should I do with two dozen dresses? I'd have to spend the whole day changing from one to another."

"Only so that I could undress you again. You're beautiful, Maria."

She lay by him with her eyes closed, and trembled under his hands. "Don't hurt me," she murmured.

"Not even like this?" She didn't answer, but she came to him so suddenly that he was overwhelmed. And then his sensations became misty and the darkness lost its contours as he slipped deeper and deeper into the intimate game of hide-and-seek and kept his eyes closed because her mouth ranged so violently over his face. . . .

Later she asked him: "Are you happy?"

"Very."

She laid her head against his chest and looked up at him. "Will you stay here?"

"I can't. They'll denounce me and hand me over to the Russians when they come."

"Then I’ll go with you," she said quietly.

He stroked her face. "How do you think you'll do that? As a camp-follower, like the Russian women we've got with us?"

"Not like them. But when the Russians come, I can't stay here either. The people will tell them that there was a German soldier I used to. ... I notice it everywhere I go. The baker always gives me his stalest bread, and in some shops they won't let me have anything at all. Father's frightened. He's already forbidden me to look after your mother."