Men of Snow (9 page)

Eventually they were all stood there naked. Franz was aware of Steiner a few feet in front of him.

‘All it is gentlemen is getting from one end of the swing bars to the other, something you’ve done by now at least a hundred times, should be easy. You get to the end, pick up your knapsack, get dressed and make your way back to your dorms for your last night in the school. We know some of you arse pokers will be sad about leaving tomorrow. The rest of us should be glad. So gentlemen we start with number one.’

It was Winkler who flipped his lighter open to set fire to the torch that Hoffenbach had picked up. His face was glowing as he started along the trench under the swing bars that was now full of fuel, the flames quickly spreading.

‘First!’ Strauss had to shout over the sudden noise of the flames, ‘The first!’

The cadet with the number one card stepped up and then did not move.

‘Come on, you first.’

‘I’m not going to....’ the cadet tried.

‘You’ll do as you’re fucking told or I’ll beat the shit out of you myself. Now get fucking up there, now!’

Finally the cadet jumped up, gripping hold of the bar, hanging there as the flames settled down.

The rest watched him, his feet almost in the fire as he frantically swung from one bar to the other.

‘Next! Come on! Next!,’ Strauss was shouting as Franz saw the number six on his knapsack.

Just then there was a scream as the first recruit missed a bar and fell into the liquid flames. His body in one writhing motion struggled out of the ditch and started rolling around in the grass before one of the senior cadets threw a blanket over him.  His screams ripped through the night echoing around the trees of the nearby wood.

‘No,’ the next cadet was shouting before Strauss gave him a crack over the shoulders.

They all watched as the cadet jumped up and started immediately swinging to the next bar, the fire blazing beneath him. When he stopped in the middle and hung there a few of the recruits began voicing their encouragement as the flames licked up towards his feet. Again he swung his naked body backwards and forwards until he stretched for the next bar, gripping it with one hand as he hung there suspended again before with obvious effort he managed to grip with both hands and begin moving onto the next bar.

‘You see!’ Strauss was shouting as the recruit finally reached the end, collapsing on the ground and then rubbing his feet with handfuls of grass.

It was Steiner next. Franz watched the way the flames sent orange patterns over his long limbs as easily he moved from one bar to the next before he too stopped in the middle.

‘Watch it boys! Steiner managed to call above the noise of the fire, ‘The bastards have taken a bar out here.’

With that he began swinging, his feet only inches away from the highest flames, his back turning black with soot, his arms stretched and quivering.

All of them watched. A group of other second years were stood at the end of the swing bars, their arms crossed, their reddened faces intent on Steiner’s efforts.

Franz could hardly breathe. The panic was for Steiner to succeed. His elongated body was alive with moving shadows, his features glistening in the heat. Everything for Franz was focused on this image so exposed and provocative at the same time, the skin and muscles almost melting in the heat.

With relief he watched Steiner manage the last bar before he dropped down, standing there, refusing any help from the second years as he quickly picked up his knapsack and started walking away.

For Franz, when he leapt up his hands were already sweating. He was confused and angry and yet forcing himself from bar to bar.

‘Move, come on!’ Winkler was shouting at him.

Momentarily he thought he saw Steiner still naked by the trees until he started choking from the smoke and fumes. Everything, the recruits, the dark night clouds, the fire, all swung with him as he stretched out for the next bar. The heat was scorching his feet and legs, throbbing along the flesh of his scars. His grip was becoming wetter as the bars were so hot. In the next moments was the sense of the absurdity of what was happening and then the fear and anger again.

Finally he stopped like the others. The missing bar left a gap to the next that seemed impossible. He wanted to let go, to sink into the flames. His arms were stiffening, his grip loosening. Again there was Steiner’s image before he started back into motion, aware of the others watching, swinging himself backwards and forwards until he stretched out, suspended for an instant before his right hand smacked onto the next bar. Immediately he went for the next and again until it was over and he was laid out on the grass coughing with the fumes, turning over to try and cool the front of his body. He could smell the burnt hairs on his legs and feel his blistered feet.

Nobody paid him any attention. They were already watching the next recruit.

The first who had fallen into the flames was crouched nearby, still wrapped in a blanket, sobbing and coughing, the skin darkened in patches on his face.

Later back in the dormitory Meissner was helping Frumm fold wet towels around his legs as Steiner lay on his bed saying nothing.

‘At least we managed,’ was Frumm’s comment.

‘The last tradition,’ Meissner added.

Franz carefully sat on the edge of his bed glancing across at Steiner.

‘You’re still burning.’

‘So light a cigarette,’ Frumm muttered back at Steiner’s remark.

‘As if that would make any difference.’

‘So shut up.’

‘Of course,’ Steiner sighed. 

                                          --------------------------------------------------------------------

The canteen next morning was half empty. There were no officers at the high table. Outside there was a convoy of trucks into which anything that could be used from the school was being taken. The whole building was full of the sounds of everybody preparing to leave. The previous night was already subsumed under this wave of activity that echoed down the corridors and out over the parade ground where a new and much larger swastika flag had been raised earlier that morning.

‘I know you’re not going home,’ Steiner mentioned, glancing across the canteen table at Franz, ‘So I’ve booked us a meal tonight at the AK hotel. It might be the last good food we come across in a long time.’

There was nobody else at their table. Frumm and Meissner from their dorm had already left on their two day passes.

‘And what are you going to do?’

‘Prepare for war,’ Steiner joked.

‘Yes. I suppose that’s all there is now.’

‘What, preparing for war?’

Franz forced a smile, ‘No. No. I meant having a meal tonight.’

‘Well it has to be better than last night.’

‘They just took their chance,’ Franz said.

‘So tonight is alright?’

‘Yes,’ he answered as recruits started leaving the hall, ready to pack up the last of their equipment and be given instructions on their new regiments and what the transport plans were going to be.

That evening they strolled into town in their civilian shirts, slacks and sleeveless jumpers. The streets were busy with people out in the warm summer evening air, sitting outside the cafes in the central square.

The AK hotel was on one of the corners of the square, its balconies full of bright flowered window boxes.

‘We might as well just go straight in unless you want a drink somewhere,’ was Steiner’s suggestion.

‘No. That’s fine. I’m hungry,’ Franz answered, noticing a few other recruits crossing the square, looking odd in their civilian clothes.

The hotel’s restaurant was shuttered against the evening light. They were shown to the last empty table before ordering their drinks.

‘Maybe we should have ordered something different, our last chance.’

‘Well I’m hoping at some point we are in Paris. Then it will be drinking all the champagne there is,’ Steiner answered.

‘You think that’s possible?’

‘I should think it’s certain. Our Fuhrer’s outrageous deal with the Russians is to have nothing to worry about when we finally turn west. Poland is just the bait.’

For a moment Franz again experienced the sudden sense of the coming war, a cold, formless sense where there were no sounds. All the rest, the armies, the fighting, the planes, the tanks were in complete silence like a mime which only he was watching.

The waiter brought their beers.

‘Here’s to us and victory,’ Steiner laughed as he raised his glass.

‘And to all the medals we’ll receive.’

‘Of course.’

‘And promotions.’

‘Why not?’

Through the restaurant’s open windows came the sound of a band starting up in the square.

‘You’d think it was all over already,’ Steiner continued, ‘we’re celebrating and it hasn’t got started yet.’

‘That’s because everybody is confident.’

‘So they should be.’

‘Not like last night.’

Steiner paused and then said, ‘Strauss, Winkler, Hoffenbach. They all could be dead in a month. The rest of them were just the usual followers. It’s not worth thinking about.’

‘You made it look easy.’

‘Well so did you.’

‘I thought you’d gone.’

‘I watched.’

‘Why?’

‘I just wanted to see how you’d get on.’

‘I was scared.’

‘Understandably, that’s what they were doing.’

‘And you?’

‘Of course, I thought I was going to soil myself. Thank God I never gave those morons the pleasure.’

They waited while their cutlery was set out and they ordered more beer.

‘I can’t imagine you being scared by that much,’ Franz eventually mentioned as he glanced across the busy restaurant.

‘You’d be surprised.’

Then he turned back to look at him, ‘No. I don’t think I would.’

‘That’s because we hardly know each other.’

‘So what else makes you scared?’

‘Lots of things. I fear dying too soon.’

‘When is too soon?’

Steiner sipped at his beer.

‘I suppose it’ll always be too soon. I just find it difficult to imagine that at some point in the future medical science will have advanced so far that death will become only an option. It will be no longer inevitable. I think at some time in the future people will manage to defeat death in many ways, but us, we’ll miss out. It will become a matter of choice but not in our lifetime.’

Franz stared at him.

‘I know for somebody who is about to go to war it is....well I suppose it is unexpected.’

‘We’ll be in the same regiment,’ was all Franz could think to say.

Steiner answered lightly, ‘It’s alright. I’m not a coward.’

‘I wasn’t thinking that. I was just wondering what the point of wars would be if nobody was killed, if death was, as you say, avoidable. ‘

‘The threat would dissolve.’

‘But if there was no escape from pain and mutilation maybe the threat of war would be even greater. You don’t die. You just suffer.’

‘Sounds worse.’

‘Because,’ Franz went on, ‘it’s likely we’d still be in the caves without the pressure that death produces. That pressure is the source of the creative process. I think it was Nietzsche who said we have to be affected. Without that our species would not survive.’

Steiner looked at him, oblivious to the sounds of the restaurant.

‘I can never tell when you’re being serious,’ was finally his remark.

‘That’s because you know nothing about me.’

‘But I think I do.’

‘Well that’s your problem.’

‘It’s not a problem Franz. It’s the complete opposite.’

They waited then while their meal was put down before them.

‘Looks good,’ Steiner commented to the waiter.

‘Thank you sir, I hope you enjoy the veal.’

‘We will.’

‘Yes,’ was Franz’s empty agreement.

For a few minutes they concentrated on the food.

‘So, what about you, what about your worst fear?’ Steiner finally asked.

Franz thought for a moment.

‘I suppose it’s being in an empty room.’

‘An empty room?’

‘Yes, with no sound, no light, nothing.’

‘Why would that..................’

‘Because I would be immediately bored,’ Franz cut in, ‘I would be emptied out quickly and then, then I think I would go crazy. Even thinking about it turns me cold.’

‘What a pair,’ Steiner joked.

‘Yes. Officers of the Wehrmacht, ready for everything except nothing.’

‘Because here is the opposite. I don’t care if it’s all superficial. It’s here, this restaurant, the people, the food, the furniture, the band playing, other noises from outside. This is how it should be.’