Crack of Doom (8 page)

The two men were regarding him curiously, but he was still too shocked to be capable of saying anything. His legs were still trembling, snow melted inside his coat collar, and the icy water ran down his back. Because he couldn't think of anything better to do, he began to swear. It helped quite a lot.

The two men in front of him grinned. "It's shaken up his brains," said the fat one.

"People shouldn't act like snowballs," the other giggled, his pointed adam's apple jerking up and down. Kolodzi suddenly went into a fury. "Do you always behave like this when someone tries to stop you?" he cried.

The adam's apple came to rest. "Nobody tells
us
to stop," the men answered in surprise.

Kolodzi put his hand to his coat, and was relieved to find he hadn't lost Schmitt's binoculars. He tried to smile. "Not even a tree?"'

"What tree?" asked the fat man quickly, his face suddenly losing its good-natured expression. "Is there something wrong with the line?"

"There's a tree across the rails," said Kolodzi. "I tried to drag it off, but couldn't manage it."

"Do you belong to the railway staff?"

"No, I'm trying to get to Jelnice and was walking along the line because it's the quickest way."

"And then you saw the tree?"

"Couldn't help seeing it. When I realized I couldn't get it away on my own, I began walking back toward Nagy, but then you people came."

"And you don't belong to the railway staff?" the fat man asked again, with a sudden note of suspicion in his voice.

Kolodzi looked around for the lantern, but it was not between the rails. Perhaps the engine had dragged it along. In an indifferent tone he asked: "Why
should
I belong to them?"

"What did you give a signal with?"

"With my flashlight. It's around here somewhere." He went over to the snow drift and pretended to be looking for the flashlight.

The fat man called him back impatiently. "Leave it, we haven't time. First we must get the tree away. Where is it?"

"Couple of hundred yards from here," Kolodzi answered. They went along to the engine, and he saw that it had been running backward, pushing a freight car. "In with you," said the fat man, "and if you've been spinning us a yarn, we'll make things hot for you, as sure as my name's Gustav."

"An excellent name," Kolodzi grinned. He climbed the steep iron steps to the cab. The heat coming from the firebox did him good. He watched the fat man working the controls. The engine started up laboriously.

"Well, and where
have
you come from?" the engineer asked over his shoulder.

Kolodzi told them the same story as he had told the signalmen. They listened to him without taking their eyes off the line. "If that's true about the tree," said the engineer, "well take you with us right to KoSice."

The fireman gave a shout. "D'you see it?"

"I'll say I see it." The engineer reduced speed. "Well, that's true enough," he said.

The engine came to a stop, but instead of making any move to climb out, the two men stared suspiciously into the wood. "What are you waiting for?" Kolodzi asked.

The engineer looked at him. "Ever heard of partisans?"

"Seeing that's why we're in Oviz! We're supposed to search for partisans there."

"God, you don't need to
search
for partisans!" The engineer spat through the window. "The bastards are everywhere. You go out, you've got a gun."

"There certainly aren't any here. The tree was pulled up by the gale, I've had a look at it."

"Are you scared?"

Kolodzi smiled, clambered down the four iron steps and regarded the freight car. On the front was a V-shaped blade, about three yards wide, over which there were two powerful headlights. He glanced casually at the wheels of the blade, but there was nothing to be seen of the lantern, perhaps it had been shattered. With studied carelessness he trotted ahead to the place where the tree lay over the rails. There he stopped and looked back. The engineer's head emerged cautiously on one side of the cabin. "How does it look?" he called. When Kolodzi waved to him he jumped out of the engine and came hesitantly nearer.

"Look at the thing," said Kolodzi.

The engineer regarded the tree. "And you couldn't get that away? Why I could pick it up between thumb and forefinger."

"I'd like to see you."

"You shall in a minute." He bent down and put his long gorilla-like arms round the trunk and with a jerk which made Kolodzi think he heard the bones crack, the man tore the heavy tree off the ground, dragged it over the line to the edge of the wood. Then he let it fall, and came back to Kolodzi. "That's how you do it."

"Simple," muttered Kolodzi, much impressed.

They returned to the train.

The fat man went to the door of the freight car, and there turned around. "You can't come in the cab. If you're seen by the stationmaster at Jelnice, I'll be in bad trouble. Don't make a sound till I call you."

"When do we get to Kosice?"

"That depends. There may be another tree blocking the line. Otherwise we'll make it by seven o'clock."

"As late as that?" asked Kolodzi in a disappointed voice.

The engineer was insulted. "Late you call it. You can be glad we're taking you with us at all." He pressed open the heavy car door with one finger. "Get a move on," he said crossly. Kolodzi climbed in. "And don't make a sound," the engineer repeated. Then the door rolled shut and Kolodzi sat down in the dark.

The wooden floor was cold. He sat on his cap and stretched out his legs. The car began to move, the engine let off steam, and then the speed increased. There was a small slit in the door, through which one could see white clouds whisking upward.

The wheels' metallic clang, the snow plow's monotonous droning, the engine's occasional whistling, began to fade from his consciousness. A great weariness went out from his legs and climbed over the whole body. Even so, he could not fall asleep. At a certain point in his brain there seemed to be a fine needle boring; it was painful, and the irritation this caused made him wide awake again. He opened his eyes, it was so dark in the car that he blinked to convince himself they were really open. When that was no use, he turned his face again toward the chink in the door, and gazed for a while at the grey-white cloud dancing past outside. Suddenly he had a distinct sense of being watched, and much as he tried to reject it as imagination, he could not shake the feeling off. He sat up straight and groped for his gun. He felt for the safety-catch with his fingers, and flicked it. At the same moment a voice said: "Don't shoot."

Kolodzi gave a start. The voice had come from the right of the car, and now he could make out a man's figure in the darkness. The figure moved closer and stopped in front of him. "Here I am," it said. "Well?" said Kolodzi.

"You're from the military police, aren't you?" "Me? Are you crazy? What are you doing here?" "Aren't you from the military police?" "Hell, no," answered Kolodzi impatiently. "Well, thank God," said the man in a relieved voice. "My name's Alfred."

"Pleased to meet you," said Kolodzi in a noncommittal voice.

They crouched on the floor, each trying to make out the other's face. As far as Kolodzi could see, the man was in the uniform of the German army but he seemed to have no gun. Kolodzi felt uncertain how to treat him, and after a pause asked: "Where are you making for?" "As far as I can get, if possible to Erfurt."

Kolodzi grinned. "But you're on the wrong train."

The man made an abrupt movement. "What d'you mean?"

"This thing's going east to KoSice. Didn't you know?"

"My God!"

Kolodzi was surprised by the dismay in his voice. "What's your trouble?"

"I told you, I'm sitting in the wrong train."

"We're all sitting in the wrong train." Kolodzi was losing his desire for conversation. The man was a puzzle to him and he had grown vaguely suspicious. So near his objective he mustn't make a mistake. "I've got leave," he said as matter-of-factly as he could. "My relations live in Kosice."

The man peered at Kolodzi's face through the darkness. Suddenly he blurted out: "They're after me. I ran into them at Roznava right in the street. They hunted me like a pack of hounds. Got a cigarette?"

Silently Kolodzi handed him the package.

"Thanks, I don't usually scrounge." Alfred took a cigarette and lit it; for the first time Kolodzi could see his face. It was a thin, intelligent face, but very nervous; his eyes blinked continually as if he were staring steadily at a bright light. Now he threw the match away and took a deep puff at his cigarette. "It was at the station I managed to give them the slip. This car was standing on the platform for Dobsina. They searched for me everywhere, except in here.
But
now. . . ."

"Now what?"

"I've got an address in Dobsina. I don't understand how it is we're bound for Kosice. The train was on the platform for Dobsina."

"That sort of thing can happen," said Kolodzi. "They must just have switched, and you didn't notice. But I still don't understand who . . ."

"The MP's," said Alfred hoarsely.

Keep out of this, said a voice inside Kolodzi: you've got to get to Kosice now, and you're not concerned with anything else. Instinctively he moved away a bit. "I can't help you," he said in a surly voice. "You cooked up your own mess and it's you now who has to stew in it."

"Right."

Kolodzi' turned his face. He suddenly felt sorry for the man but he fought the feeling. It's not right, he told himself, you can't simply run away and leave others to carry the can. Where'd we be if everyone tried to run away? His momentary uneasiness subsided. It's a dirty business, he thought, and anyone who lets himself in for it must know what he's doing. "Everyone must know what he's doing and which side he's on," he said aloud.

Alfred did not reply.

"Don't you think it's more decent to get a Russian bullet in your brain than to kill yourself?"

"More decent, is it!" jeered Alfred. "What decency have we still got? That we gas the Jews instead of cutting their throats, or hang our soldiers instead of clubbing them to death—is that the sort of decency you mean?"

The subject made Kolodzi nervous. "Listen," he said, taking Alfred by his coat and shaking him, "now just listen to me. Did I start this war? And while I have to stick my own neck into combat, I'm not going to let someone like you come along with stupid stories about the Jews. What are the Jews to me, or the trash that have been put up against the wall? They're no loss. If they'd had
their
way, the Russians would, have been in Kosice long ago."

"Oh, so that's how you see it, is it?" Alfred's voice grew shrill. "Was it the Russians, then, who started the war? Why are they at the gates of Kosice, why has it come to this point with us all? Not because the Russians declared war on us, was it? Are you people really so dense, or are you just putting it on?"

"We're putting it on," Kolodzi answered furiously. "I've been roaming round Russia these three and a half years to have you come and tell me it was all for nothing? If I'd a man like you in my company, I'd make him dig mass graves from morning till night, so that he'd realize why we can't run away—and that's because the ones in the mass graves didn't run away either, although they were neither stupider nor cleverer than the rest of us." Breathing heavily, he grabbed Alfred's coat and shouted: "If you want to run, then go ahead, but leave me in peace. I'll be glad to have seen the last of you." He fell back, trying to calm himself, but then he flared up again. "Did I start the war, blast you?"

"You're one of the people who are keeping it going."

"Me? You're crazy. Whether I go on with it or not is as unimportant for the war as. . . ." Failing to find an adequate comparison, he broke into curses.

"Why do you go on with it then, if it is so unimportant?" mocked Alfred. "You said it was that yourself."

"Unimportant for the war," cried Kolodzi. "For the war, you damned fool. But not for me. It's important for me that I stick where I belong and that's by my ... by the others for whom it's also important. Can't you understand that?"

There was no answer from Alfred. Kolodzi stared into the darkness. A strange, dull sadness spread through him. Damned, he thought, damned. It had never got him as badly before and he couldn't understand himself.

"I wouldn't like to be in your shoes," he declared.

"One has to take some risks," answered Alfred.

"Perhaps we'll still win the war, then what do you do?"

"Win the war! Don't fool yourself."

Kolodzi felt his sadness increasing. He listened to the monotonous noise of the snow plow, beneath
him
the floor was trembling.

He tried to reason himself into a peaceful mood. This man has his outlook, he thought, and he, Kolodzi, had his own. One was responsible all the time to one's own conscience only and so long as one had nothing to reproach oneself with, one could listen to a different opinion without committing high treason. He discouraged further conversation.

After a long while Alfred spoke up again in a different tone.

"I have to get out of this crate before we're in Kosice. There are sure to be MP's at the station."

"I'm getting out before that."

"Can one?"

"I think so. There are lots of tracks there and the trains slow down to a walk when they're approaching the station. You just have to jump the right way." Kolodzi peered at his watch. They had been traveling for two hours. He rose and went to the door. The darkness made it impossible to get any sort of bearings but it couldn't be long now.

Alfred moved nearer. "Are we there?"

"We shall be soon." Kolodzi picked up his tommy-gun. "That must go out first, I need both hands free. You haven't a gun?"

"Chucked it away."

"That was dumb. A good tommy-gun is worth more than a bad leave pass."