Legion of the Damned (11 page)

Porta blew his nose in his fingers and spat at the wall, hitting a notice announcing that spitting was forbidden.

"I've been darned unlucky with my leave. I had scarcely got inside the door before some hag from over in Spandau came running with a baby and had the impertinence to tell me straight to my innocent, handsome face that I was its father. I told her in a civil and well-bred manner that there must be some regrettable mistake and that she could go and -- in the garden.

"Darn me if the mare did not take me to court--and I had to go and stand before some bellowing creature who sat raving behind a tall desk and spouted away that I was father to that bawdy strumpet's residual product.

"I told him quietly and calmly what was a fact, that anyone must be able to see that it was an utter physical impossibility for such a handsome young man as I to sire a baby that looked like that, and I pointed to the product which the hag had brought with her.

"There was a lot of noise about a blood test and a squint-eyed individual who asserted that he was a doctor arranged that side of it, and happy I was, for now I believed that it would all be cleared up, but it just shows that you should never trust doctors, for, devil take me, if they did not say afterward that I must be held to be the child's father."

"But Porta, they can't do that! If your Soldier's Book shows that you have not been in Berlin they can't..."

"They can do anything. Just as I am in full swing taking tender farewell of my dear old folk and it's all rosy and gnashing of teeth, then a rickety old sow comes walking in and informs me that she is going to farrow.

"'Very interesting,' says I, 'and good luck with it--the Fuhrer will be most happy. My regards to your husband and tell him from me that he must take the dustbin down every day till this is all over.'

"It was not a thing that concerned me, of course, but then one has one's manners after all. So, I chatted a bit with the mare about the great happiness that was coming to her, and so that she too should know it was Christmas we went into the other room and ate a sweet together.

"I, idiot that I was, never thought of anything, till the mare whispered into my shell-like ear: 'You're the father, me dear; aren't you glad?'

"'Glad?' I bellowed. 'You must be stark raving!'

"And so she was dismissed without my blessing. One's just dogged by misfortune. I don't know how it is with others, but it only needs a woman to sit on my lap and there it is."

"You ought to try buttoning up your fly," said The Old Un. "Tell me honestly, Porta,
weren't
you in Berlin at all ten months ago?"

"You can see for yourself, in my Soldier's Book," said Porta.

"Yes, yes, but what's in a Soldier Book is one thing, and what isn't is another."

"
Et tu, Brute
," said Porta, hurt. "I was in Berlin ten months ago--but hell, it was only for half a day."

"That doesn't matter if you were on the thigh path," said The Old Un.

Just let me get my hands on the throat of the poet who wrote that the Mediterranean was blue and lovely and smiling.

With legs dangling over the edges of their cattle cars, the 18th Battalion rolled through Romania, Hungary and Austria, and from there we cheered our way down through Italy. Five times we got Porta to the door to look at a macaroni field. He was never properly convinced that macaroni is not a plant.

We were quartered in Naples, equipped with brand-new tanks and put into tropical uniforms. Porta refused to exchange his old black felt beret for a helmet, and there was such an altercation between him and the depot Feldwebel that the noise of it could be heard on Vesuvius. The result was a compromise: Porta accepted the helmet, but the Feldwebel did not get his beret.

Just before we were to be loaded an epidemic broke out in the battalion and in a few days we lost so many that we had to remain where we were a bit longer, till replacements arrived from Germany.

When we eventually embarked there were five battalions of us, five thousand men divided between two ships, former passenger steamers. We roared hurrah as our boat slid out of the harbor. We hung over the rail and up in the masts and rigging, and cheered and cheered.

Each man was issued a life belt and we had strict orders never to take them off, but they made too good pillows for anyone to respect such an order. The lifeboats were kept swung out on their davits There were AA guns mounted on the deck and we were escorted by three Italian torpedo boats with oily, black smoke pouring from their stocky funnels. The boat pitched violently, and you could not stay down in the hold for the stench of the vomit. Porta, The Old Un and I wrapped ourselves in our greatcoats and lay in the lee of the deckhouse. I cannot remember what we talked about, but I do remember that we were quite satisfied with our lot. I believe we just smoked and talked quietly of things in general, thoughtful little observations uttered at sober intervals. We talked rather like laborers sitting on the edge of a trench during the lunch interval. For a while we ceased to be the gallows birds we normally were, and Porta did not even lard his talk with words descriptive of the human sexual organs, as he usually did. Even he behaved normally. I found myself longing for Ursula to lend reality to the peace, of which we were being allowed a momentary taste in a troopship heavily laden with men and tanks.

Porta felt that he wanted music, but discovered that his suitcase was gone. "Help!" he yelled. "Help! I'm dead! Murdered! Thieves, murderers, damned lot of Nazis! I've been robbed! Plundered! My flute and my tails!"

He refused to be comforted, even when we assured him that he could buy a new flute in Tripoli. No flute from Tripoli could ever be as good as his old one.

Gradually we fell asleep.

We were awakened by a tremendous noise of motors in the darkness just above our heads. Spiteful red tongues of flame stabbed down at us from the air. Screechings and whistlings tore at our eardrums; there was a banging and smacking against the steel plates of the ship's sides. Our own gun stuck its tongue out through the darkness back at the attacking bombers. Boom-boomboom, it went, and the machine guns barked furiously.

We stood pressed against the deckhouse, both afraid and pleasantly thrilled--this, after all, was the first time we had been in action--while we tried to make head or tail of what was happening. Now the planes were back again, roaring as they dived.

Then a whine rose above the roar. The Old Un gave me a push and shouted:

"Down! This is it!"

Then came the roar, and the big boat shook. Again we heard the dreadful howling, but this time it was the other ship they were after. Along with the crash several pillars of fire shot up over there, and in the glare of them we saw each other's faces. Within a few seconds the other ship was a roaring sea of flames. Red and yellow tongues shot upward through thick smoke with reports as loud as gunfire. A plane dropped onto the foredeck and lay there. Then that, too, was ringed by flames. Suddenly I thought that my eardrums had burst. I could not hear a sound. It was like a film when the sound track has failed. I got up and looked out across the dark red sea, but suddenly I was flung over and found that I could hear again. Fountains of fire and water rose toward the heavens. From inside the ship came the sound of resounding explosions. One of our three big funnels rose and sailed off slowly in an arc into the darkness. It was a remarkable, unreal sight.

"The ship's capsizing!"

Rumbling crashes were still coming from inside the ship, whence rose a thousand-voiced cry of terror from those in the holds. We looked confusedly at each other. Then we jumped.

The water was so fantastically far beneath me that I thought I should never reach it; but all at once it had closed over me, and I sank and sank, feeling as though my body were broken in half. There was a roaring and seething in my ears, and inside my head something was throbbing faster and faster, louder and louder. In the end I could stand no more. I gave up. Now you're going to die, I thought, and at that instant my mouth came above the surface and my aching lungs snatched at the air. But I was under again at once. Frantically I labored with arms and legs to get as far as possible from the sinking steamer so as not to be sucked down with her when she went. All the colors of the rainbow danced and flickered before my eyes. I have no idea whether I swam in the right direction, but I assume that I did, although I do not remember taking a bearing. I just kicked out for dear life, while my muscles yelled with pain and begged to be allowed to stop what they were doing, preferring to die. My instinct of self-preservation, however, was stronger than my muscles, gasping lungs or will; it was strongest of all and made me cling, sobbing, laughing, only semiconscious, to a life buoy that suddenly appeared.

I floated, my arms resting on the life buoy. The black, foam-covered waves sent me shooting up like a rocket till I was dizzily perched on the top of a huge mountain of water, staring in horror down into a gurgling trough. Several times, as I plunged into such a valley, I cried out hysterically.

Far away, a blaze was coloring the heavens reddish purple; otherwise there was nothing but water, water, savage, mighty water and terrifying, pitch-black night.

Sharks! What about sharks? Were there sharks in the Mediterranean? Yes, there were! I kicked out hysterically, again and again, but I soon tired and had to stop. Then I thought of The Old Un and Porta and started yelling out their names into the darkness:

"OLD-UN! PO-R-TA! PO-R-TA!"

Only the roar of the waves answered, and again I sobbed wildly and desperately. In my fear I called to my mother and to Ursula.

"Pull yourself together, man!" I shouted, and then I began to laugh. I howled like a hyena, was beside myself, uttering lunatic sounds that were no longer mine, then I recovered and went on sobbing. All night I was tossed about among the waves, seasick, vomiting and weeping.

Was that someone shouting? I listened. Yes, someone was yelling away in the darkness. There it was! Definitely. Nonsense. They were all dead. There's no one. Sometime you'll die in the dark too. Everybody's dead. They have other things to think of. There isn't one who thinks of you. They are evil and cold; you are ridiculous if you expect anything of people.

Yes, but there must be
someone
. You don't just lie in the water and are forgotten. When they have gone through the lists and found out who is missing they will send out everyone available.

To look for you? You? A convicted soldier! Ha-ha-ha-ha!

It began to grow light. Wasn't that something there to the right? Wasn't that a man lying on a life buoy, as you are?

You're seeing things, things you want to see. You're a fool, and you're seeing things that aren't there.

But it was Porta. With a broad grin he pulled his black beret from inside his tunic, put it on his head and raised it as though it were a hat.

"Good day to you, my boy! So you've come down to the beach too? I've got a bit damp about the feet, but an occasional bathe does you no harm."

"Porta!" I shouted delightedly. "Oh, thank God, you old muckspreader!" I was slightly crazy, and I could see from his eyes that he was too. "Where's The Old Un?"

"He's somewhere in the pond here," said Porta with a flourish of his arm. "But don't ask me whether he's lying with his snout in or out of the water."

We tied our life buoys together so that we should not risk drifting apart.

"Perhaps you're waiting for the same streetcar, sir?" said Porta.

"And why the devil are you so thin?" said he, glaring hungrily at me. "There isn't even a square meal on you. But it will be fun a hundred years from now, when I can tell my grandchildren how once I saved my life with a bag of bones called Sven. Doesn't it make you proud that you should end your heroic career as a meal for Hitler's best soldier? When I get home I shall see that you get a memorial. Would you prefer granite or bronze?"

All at once he uttered a great roar and pointed to a ship in the distance.

"Our streetcar!"

We called and shouted ourselves hoarse, but the ship disappeared.

"Glad you had to go!" yelled Porta, as it vanished below the horizon. "Just leave us in peace. We haven't done anything to you!"

The gray, overcast morning passed in talk. The sun was scorching when it did occasionally break through the clouds. In the end I became half-stupefied from exhaustion, but Porta kept up a long monologue.

"Now a couple of gulls like that, they can laugh at everything. There would be nothing to it if we had wings; but instead, here we are sitting with our bottoms in the foot bath. You spend a long life taking the greatest care not to get too near the darned sea, and of course the filthy army has to send you right into it. It's what I've always said: no good ever came of being a soldier. Promise me you'll never be a general, my son! If only it wasn't so wet here."

"Porta... do you think we'll come through?"

"Come through? No, you can take your oath we won't, so bow your head, my boy. But if you snivel I'll catch you such a one on your snout that you'll have to be issued a harp. You are to keep your ugly mug out of this ---- pot here. I'll tell you all right when you can stop. Meanwhile, be glad you're not lying in a stinking shell hole with the big guns giving a concert. Of course, those little holes out in no-man's-land are excellent for those with a tendency to constipation, but this is better. You see--and this is a unique, undeserved piece of luck where you are concerned--here you can not only mess your pants but be washed clean simultaneously. You can't do that in a shell hole."

"Porta... do you believe in God?"

"Who, him? If you mean the chap the clergymen preach about, you can go home to your vicar and tell him he had better resign from the union and find someone better to tout for."

"It's my opinion, too, that the Church and everything about it is a despicable swindle. Strange, my saying 'It's my opinion.' I don't normally talk like that."