The Bloody Road to Death (12 page)

Porta has suddenly discovered there is a goldmine in these furs if he only handles them properly. It can go on forever.

‘What did Oberst Hinka have to say?’ asks the Old Man with interest, as Porta enters the hut.

‘Nothing much. He’d had an uneasy night with the fleas. He gave me the furs back and now they’ve entered the service of the priesthood. It’s not every flea-bag that gets a chance like that.’

Tiny grins so much he chokes on his coffee.

‘Bet you ten to one the parson’ll be cursing you all night and the skins come back to you without a blessing tomorrow,’ prophesies Gregor, rubbing his hands in anticipation.

The following morning the padre comes galloping up on a foam-flecked horse.

‘You’ll suffer for this,’ he snarls, throwing the furs in Porta’s face.

Porta lifts his arm as if to salute, but bends it instead and slaps the inside of his elbow with his left hand. The classic international sign for ‘up my arse!’

‘You’ll hear from me, obergefreiter!’ screams the padre, livid with rage. ‘Don’t think I’m done with you, yet!’

‘Back to daddy, me little beauties,’ laughs Porta to the fleas as he brushes the dust of the road from the furs.

The very sight of the furs makes us itch, but between Porta and the fleas there seems to be an armistice. They are friends and do not attack one another.

A BMW motorcycle and sidecar comes noisily down the hill. In the sidecar sits Chief Mechanic Wolf with the air of a general.
On the motorcycle sit his two Chinese bodyguards, both armed with
kalashnikovs
²
.

Wolf stops in a cloud of dust when his eye falls on the furs.

‘Whatcha got there?’ he asks arrogantly, slashing at the furs with his
nagajka
,
³
an heirloom from the NKVD.

‘What’s up? Those dogs of yours shit in your eyes? Can’t you tell furs when you see ’em?’ asks Porta, superciliously.

Where’d you nick ’em?’ asks Wolf, insultingly.

Think we’re all like you?’ Porta turns the insult away, loftily.

They’re confiscated,’ declares Wolf, categorically. ‘Ac-cordin’ to HDV
⁴
anything found in the field is to be turned in to the nearest Army Stores. That’s
me
, my lad! Understood, dogsbody?’

‘Get stuffed! Crawl smartly up your own central orifice,’ says Porta, contemptuously. The German armed forces and me’ve got different ideas on the subject of what’s private property and what belongs to the arse-lickin’ German people.’

‘Your tongue’ll get your neck stretched some day,’ shouts Heide warningly from inside the hut, where he sits deep in
Mein Kampf
.

‘What d’you want for ’em?’ Wolf breaks in sharply. He jumps from the BMW sidecar, unbuttoning his holster flap as he comes. Experience has taught him to take no chances when bargaining with Porta. Anything can happen.

‘Not for sale!’ Porta turns the question away coldly and lights a big cigar. He hates cigars really, but thinks it a help to be able to veil himself in a cloud of cigar smoke at a critical moment, and to be able to blow smoke into an opponent’s face. Al Capone, from Chicago, always had a cigar in his mouth when he was out on business. He is the only one out of sixty-two million Italian Porta looks up to and wishes to imitate.

‘
Not for sale?
Wolf cannot believe his own ears. Even his two wolfhounds look bewildered. Porta to own something which was not for sale? Impossible. He’d be ready to sell
himself
to Arabian slave-traders if the price was high enough.

Wolf plays idly with the LMG
⁵
mounted on the sidecar and, as if accidentally, the muzzle lines up on Porta.

‘Cut that shit, you ginger bloody Yid!’ hisses Wolf, irritably, swinging the machine-gun round as if ready to mow down the whole of No. 2 Section in one long roaring burst.

‘I’m ready to buy them furs and when I’m ready to buy, I buy! Understand me? What I
say goes
! If you won’t sell I’ll take ’em without payin’ see? Am I gettin’ through to the shit between your ears? Throw ’em into the sidecar and you can pick up a pound of apples for ’em next payday. Make yourself an apple pie. Think yourself lucky I don’t report you to GEFEPO
⁶
for stealin’ ’em.’

‘You ought to join a travellin’ circus, Wolfie boy!’ Porta laughs, jeeringly. ‘You’d do all right falling on your arse between the turns.’

‘I
want
those
furs
,’ snarls Wolf, making his
nagajka
hiss through the air.

‘Wish in one hand and shit in the other,’ grins Porta, cocking his nose in the air. Swinging the furs over his shoulder, as a sign that he regards the subject as closed, he begins to go off up the road

‘Here now, me old joker’, shouts Wolf, running after him, ’don’t piss against the wind, you’ll only get wet. We’re a couple that can fix a deal good as any parson’s daughters.’

Porta ignores him and increases his pace. He has noticed his friend the Greek village priest up by the bell-tower and waves pleasantly to him.

The priest waves smilingly back and begins to pull on the rope. The air fills with the tolling of the church bell. The villagers leave their houses on their way to Mass.

Wolf slaps his forehead in an attempt to start his brain working. He is almost choking with rage over Porta’s stubbornness.

Porta turns into the packed bar, run illicitly by the road-mender, at the moment a dead-drunk infantryman gets thrown out with threats of a quick death if he tries to come back.

‘Tonsil acid,’ orders Porta knocking on the bar with his Mpi. A large tankard of poor man’s champagne sails down the bar to
him and with a well-co-ordinated movement of arm and neck he knocks it back in one go.

Tango pushes his way over to him with Buffalo close at his heels.

‘We know where there’s a load o’ wine,’ whispers Buffalo, secretively. The Greco’s can deliver it tonight, and it can go back to Germany in empty ammo-baskets.’

‘We’ve got something else, too,’ grins Tango, cunningly, executing a few dance steps. ‘And we can send it to Bielefeld marked GEKADOS in sealed zinc cases. Even the SS-Heini’s wouldn’t dare touch them!’

‘Meet me at the parson’s at eleven o’clock tonight!’ says Porta, swallowing another glass, ’and beat it, my sons, and leave me in peace. I’ve got some thinking to do.’

‘There’s more’n
you’ll
buy it,’ snarls Tango, looking meaningly at Chief Mechanic Wolf who at this very moment bangs in through the door.

Porta blows cigar-smoke gently into Tango’s face.

‘Look now, Tango my young son, you exist only because I am a good kind man. Your time in the Greater German Wehr-macht ends just as soon as I feel I do not want you to breathe the same air as I do any longer. Sons like you, who can’t count to twenty without taking their boots off’d better be glad for every minute we let you walk about upright on the face of the earth.’

Wolf laughs loudly with satisfaction. He appreciates a joke, always excepting when it is against himself.

‘Did you know you look silly when you laugh?’ asks Porta, contemptuously.

Wolf swallows hard, and is about to say something coarse, when he remembers the attractive furs. He slaps Porta on the shoulder with affected comradeliness.

‘When there’s a war on then’s the time for far-sighted people to do business. I know them zinc cases well. They’re almost mine, but I will naturally withdraw and leave them to you,
if
you will sell me the furs.’

‘You’d be a hit in the comics,’ grins Porta, calling to a pretty, long-haired girl who is sitting on the lap of a wachtmeister of artillery.

‘What do you want?’ asks the girl with a cold look on her pretty Slav features.

Porta lifts up her dress.

‘I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours!’

’Pig!’ snarls the girl.

‘Obergefreiter,’ replies Porta, bowing from the waist.

‘Cultivated lot, these Grecos,’ grins Wolf. ‘State their name, soon as you meet ’em. Jokin’ apart, Porta my lad, what’d you say to six pounds of caviare, five cartons of Camels and a whole case of
Slivovitz
for your worn-out furs, and that’s top price.’

‘Six pounds of caviare! I’d have fins back of my ears and gills up my arsehole before I’d finished eating that lot,’ grins Porta, sarcastically. ‘Start talking about Scotch whisky and coffee and we might have at least a starting point.’

They start with a bottle of schnapps and after three hours of heated discussion, liberally sprinkled with threats, the deal is on. They have a drink on it and with uncertain steps go about their individual affairs, Wolf with the furs under his arm. He decides to go to bed early with a
Blitzmädel
to celebrate them.

‘It’ll be the most lively bang those two’ve ever had in their lives,’ grins Porta expectantly.

‘He’ll let your guts out for you,’ prophesies the Old Man, darkly.

Porta nearly strangles on his food at the thought of Wolf and the Blitzmädel’s night with the fleas.

‘Wish ’e’d lend them Chinese bleeders one of ’em,’ says Tiny. ‘What I wouldn’t give for that pair to get to know them bleedin’ fleas!’

Next day Wolf is back with his whole gang. The Blitzmädel is sitting between him and one of the Chinese in the armoured Kübel. The fleas have left her looking like a boiled lobster.

‘What the devil’s the matter with your face?’ shouts Porta, with pretended surprise, viewing Wolf’s swollen features with interest.

‘You don’t think, do you, you twistin’ Yid bastard, that you’re going to get away with doing
me?
screams Wolf, grinding his teeth and hurling the furs at Porta’s head.

‘Shut your ugly great trap, Wolf. You make more noise’n a
pig with his bollocks caught in a meatgrinder,’ answers Porta, with a condescending air. ‘Didn’t you go on your knees to me to let you buy those lovely furs?
I
didn’t want to sell them.’

‘You’ll pay for this!’ roars Wolf, aiming his Mpi at Porta. Raging, he kicks one of his Chinese.

‘Relax, relax,’ Porta reproves him in a fatherly way, ‘People can die of high blood pressure!’

‘Let’s have my goods again,’ shouts Wolf, beside himself with rage. ‘You’ve got your bloody fleabags back!’

‘Think you’re talking to an idiot?’ laughs Porta, shaking his head. ‘If you return the furs that’s your business, but repayment for them! Not here, my old son! Didn’t you know we’re in Greece now?’

‘You
knew
there was fleas in those furs!’ rages Wolf, scratching himself desperately.

‘True,’ admits Porta nonchalantly.

‘Why didn’t you say so?’ snuffles Wolf.

‘Didn’t ask, did you?’ smiles Porta. Wolf explodes in a long animal howl, and throws out bloody threats of strange and unusual revenges.

‘You make a bad impression soon as you open your mouth,’ says Porta. ‘Even a starving Italian would be scared of accepting a free box of spaghetti from you!’

‘I’ll pull your bloody arsehole up over your ears,’ promises Wolf, gnashing his teeth.

‘We’ll spit on your grave,’ promises Tiny, from the darkness of the hut.

‘You’re a cheap skate, Wolf,’ sneers Porta, ’and cheap skates get caught.’

‘Quiet boys,’ says Wolf, patting his slavering wolfhounds. ‘You two are gonna get a nice little present. You’re gonna get a wicked bastard’s head in a nice pink box all tied up with a pretty blue ribbon.’

‘You wouldn’t believe what
were
goin’ to think up for bleedin’
you
,’ shouts Tiny from the window of the hut.

‘Think of that, now!’ Wolf laughs jeeringly, and spits in Tiny’s direction. ‘
You? Think?
I’ve seen your fuckin’ papers, son. You had 39 at trainin’ school for intelligence and to get even that they had to knock that headful of shit you’ve got up
against a concrete wall for ten days. Since then your IQ’s been
dropping
slow but sure. You’re the boy they have to write his boot-size on his forehead for, when he’s pickin’ up new ’uns at the stores. Adolf’s soddin’ scientists at Buchenwald are beginnin’ to wonder. If they can teach a nuthead like you to shoot off a gun, maybe they ought to be gettin’ started on the apes!’

‘Talk, talk, talk! You spew shit like a underground paper spews bleedin’ lies,’ shouts Tiny from the hut. ‘I’m a bleedin’ sight better off’n you are, Wolf! I got papers say I’m
barmy
, but I ain’t bleedin’
silly
, me old son, an’ don’t you forget it. I’m
crafty
, I am, an’ it’s the crafty bleeders like me as’ll come out of this war alive. The clever bleeders gets an ’ero’s bleedin’ death, am I right?’

‘Chief Mechanic Wolf, you are the long-lost son of a five mark whore, and as such we’ll push your nipples out through your back with bullets first chance we get,’ promises Porta, solemnly.

There’ll be one for your bleedin’ ’ead, too, you dirty dog,’ echoes Tiny, happily.

‘We’ll upt a charge from a sawn-off shotgun straight up your arse, Wolf,’ howls Gregor, excitedly.

‘
All right
you shiteatin’ shower! The real war starts
now
for you lot,’ roars Wolf, slapping his Mpi. ‘I’m gonna take you one by one!’