The Bloody Road to Death (27 page)

‘They don’t know me yet, those wicked men,’ boasts von Pader, ’but they’re
going
to!’

‘Shall we send the charge sheet to regiment, sir?’ asks Blatz, innocently.

‘I never, ever again want to see a charge sheet concerning that horrible man,’ screams von Pader furiously, tearing the charge sheet into a thousand pieces. ‘He doesn’t
exist
any more. Never speak his name in my presence again!’

Hauptfeldwebel Blatz steamrollers through the company, breaking up card games, confiscating supplies acquired illegally, demanding accounts of ammunition expended from section-leaders, and handing out fatigues right, left and centre. When, late in the afternoon, he has bawled himself into a state of exhaustion, he feels convinced that he has No. 5 Company by the short hairs.

‘Soft as
shit
, they are!’ he says to the company clerk. ‘
I’ll
soon teach ’em who they’ve got for a Hauptfeldwebel now. Those check lists come from Chief Mechanic Wolf yet?’

The clerk swallows. He knows Wolf and can see trouble approaching.

‘Check lists! Have they come yet?’ repeats Blatz.

‘No, Herr Hauptfeldwebel, and I’m afraid they won’t! Wolf asked me to, – er! Well! To fuck him crossways, sir!’

‘Is the man mad?’ almost whispers Blatz. He cannot believe his own ears.

The clerk shrugs his shoulders. He does not want to make an enemy of Wolf.

Blatz goes to Wolf. This is a matter of discipline.

Wolf welcomes him sitting in his own personal rocking-chair with his feet on the desk. He lights a big cigar carelessly without offering one to Blatz.

White with rage Blatz advances on him, but stops short when both wolfhounds show their fangs and begin to growl ominously.

‘What do you think you’re up to?’ he asks, trembling with indignation. ‘Where are the check lists I ordered you to prepare? Don’t you know who’s Hauptfeldwebel in this company?’

Wolf laughs noisily, and points at Blatz with a cossack sabre.

‘Fuck off and keep your nose out of my business!’

‘You’ll regret this!’ hisses Blatz.

‘Beat it, before I set the dogs on you,’ grins Wolf, pointing to the door.

Blatz leaves him, cursing and swearing revenge. He marches
confidently down the dusty village road. Passing the GO’s quarters he hears noisy singing from behind the house. Cautiously he looks round the corner and sees Tiny, lying alongside a turnip trench and singing with lusty voice:

Blatz is about to draw back round the corner and disappear, when Hauptmann von Pader knocks on the pane and waves to him.

No help for it, he’ll have to go in however little he wishes it.

‘Blatz, remove that singing idiot!’ hisses the Hauptmann, furiously. ‘Shoot him, if you like!’

Blatz shuffles his feet like a laying hen.

‘Herr Hauptmann,’ he stammers, confusedly.

‘That’s an order! Get that clown out of here!’ screams von Pader, beside himself. Blatz sighs like a condemned man. With uncertain steps he goes out to move Tiny on.

From behind the curtain von Pader keeps an eye on developments, in company with a bottle of cognac. To break and crush a soldier has been as easy for him, up to now, as swatting a fly. He takes a long swig at the bottle. With any luck he’ll soon be back in Berlin, and then these half-human front soldiers will really get to know him. He peers cautiously out of the window and sees to his satisfaction that Blatz is talking to Tiny. If anybody can break that yokel it will be Hauptfeldwebel Blatz, the terror of every NCO’s school, Bonecrusher Blatz!

Von Pader laughs croakingly to himself, takes another swig at the cognac bottle, and starts to walk to and fro in the low-ceilinged cottage; he has quartered himself in the style to which a German officer with blue blood in his veins is entitled. The owner of the cottage has, of course, been ejected and has taken up residence in a hole in the ground. Baron von Pader would not condescend to live in the same house as a Russian
un-termensch
They might give him some filthy disease or other.
He had fired at the Russian woman when she had made trouble about some pots and pans she wanted to take with her. What the devil good were pots and pans to her? He was told one of the shots had hit her, but would not let the medical feldwebel look at her. German medics should not have to touch
un-termensch
. They had not been given their expensive training to look after
them
. Never be nice to a Russian. It made them cheeky, like the niggers. The whip was what they needed. And an execution now and then wasn’t a bad thing. Hauptmann von Pader liked hanging people. Oberst Hinka, now, was against that sort of thing. He required the
untermensch
to be treated like Germans. Well, that puffed-up oberst would soon get the wind taken out of his sails when they got him down to Admiral Schröder Strasse. Defeatist, racial saboteur!

Tiny is singing even more loudly from out by the turnip trench. Hauptfeldwebel Blatz has disappeared.

Baron von Pader tightens his lips, snatches up the Mpi from the table and pushes the curtains to one side. At the same moment a pane of glass splinters behind him. A hand-grenade rolls across the floor. He screams in fear and throws himself flat.

Tiny rushes in, with his Mpi at the ready, stops in the middle of the room, looks from the OC on the floor to the spluttering hand-grenade. He bends down, picks up the grenade and throws it neatly out through the open doorway.

Von Pader crawls to his feet, brushes off his slate-grey uniform and turns his back demonstratively on Tiny. Tiny does not, of course, exist.

Tiny couldn’t care less. He chatters gaily about training grenades, partisans and many other things which are part of life behind the lines.

‘’Err ’auptmann, sir, I do be sure as ’ow it’s some of these ’ere officers as are tryin’ to make game o’ ’ee! Now if
I
was to get ’old of a dead rat, as stinks a bit, like, then we could throw ’er into the middle of they. Why ’tain’t no joke ’avin’ trainin’ grenades thrown at ’ee, now is it? An’ you a new man at the job, as you might say!’

Hauptmann von Pader clenches and unclenches his hands in an effort to contain his rage. He fingers his holster. Should he
shoot this man and say he had attacked him? He decides not to.

Porta is sitting across from Chief Mechanic Wolf, at Wolf’s long, broad desk, discussing four lorries and several cases of canteen supplies. Wolf is working away at half a pig’s head. Porta is building himself a sandwich in the way he feels a sandwich
should
be built. First a piece of coarse bread with a layer of goose fat. Thereafter a sizeable piece of smoked ham, covered with slices of hunt sausage and a little of anything else to hand. The whole finally covered with a layer of gooseberry jam!

He opens his jaws wide and manoeuvres the enormous sandwich into his mouth. He finds it difficult to get his teeth through it but finally manages to do so.

‘I hope you choke!’ says Wolf, cheerfully.

Porta gets the last bit down and picks up a chicken over which he pours a whole jar of jam.

‘Don’t hope too much, Wolf,’ he says filling his mouth with chicken. ‘I could swallow a fair-sized pig whole, listen to it grunt inside me all day, and wind up shitting it out again in the form of a whole litter of live sucking pigs!’

‘I wouldn’t wonder if you could,’ mumbles Wolf, crossly, shovelling sauerkraut over pig’s feet. ‘Just remember, though, it’s
my
grub you’re surroundin’ and to the best of my knowledge you weren’t invited to either.’

Porta laughs noisily, resting his jaws.

‘You’re forgiven, son Wolf, but I ought to say I never
am
invited. It’s unnecessary! I come
un
invited but am always dressed for dinner!’

They eat silently for a while, looking at one another calculatingly. The only sounds are of bones cracking and wine swilling food down.

Wolf, who has been well brought up, drinks from a glass, Porta takes it straight from the bottle. Wolf has his own private dinner service. Porta is willing to guzzle his food straight from the pot. The main thing, as far as he is concerned, is that there is enough of it.

‘Shall we share the pig’s head?’ he asks, bringing a long kitchen knife down accurately between the animal’s eyes as it dominates the table with a tomato in its mouth.

Wolf growls something unintelligible ending in ‘shit’!

Porta cuts the pig’s head in two, taking the larger part for himself. He empties it with a long slobbering, sucking sound unsuitable for queasy stomachs.

Wolf looks at him with loathing.

Tell me, son! Don’t you ever eat in the mess-hall?’

‘Of course I do,’ smiles Porta. ‘There’s
food
there isn’t there?’

They lean back in their chairs. Two long, satisfied belches make themselves heard. Porta takes off his boots and socks and lays them on the table. An acrid aroma rises from them. He looks sharply at Wolf, who has started on a dish of steaming black pudding, and pushes one of the socks closer to him, with a big toe which is not notable for cleanliness. He wriggles his toes luxuriously.

Without turning a hair Wolf pours apple sauce over his black pudding.

Porta starts to cut his toenails. Slips of nail fly past Wolf’s ears.

The wolf-hounds snuffle with displeasure and move further away from the desk. Porta’s socks they find a bit too much for sensitive noses.

‘What’s that bloody stink?’ asks Wolf, suddenly, looking up from his sausage.

‘Stink?’ asks Porta, innocently. ‘To be expected isn’t it, in your company?’

‘Don’t get familiar, son,’ growls Wolf, warningly. ‘Don’t forget who’s Chief Mechanic and Stabsfeldwebel here. And don’t forget who’s the holder of the German Cross in silver. Move those bloody socks, man! Who ever heard of socks on a dining-room table?’ With his fork he flips them on to the floor. They land in front of the dogs which back off whining and howling.

‘I know where there’s three tractors,’ says Porta, after an extended silence. ‘Chain-drive, like the heavy artillery play about with.’

‘What tractors?’ asks Wolf, with apparent disinterest.

‘First class jobs. Not ruined by bad oil and petrol. They’ve come straight from the States, addressed to Ivan.’

‘What make?’ asks Wolf, soaking up grease with a piece of Ukranian peasant bread. ‘If they’re Fords, I couldn’t be less interested. Tito began to hate the capitalists in earnest when they sent him some of them. They’re America’s revenge on Europe for us sending them all our unwanted black sheep.’

Porta washes his mouth out with a half bottle of Crimean champagne, to which he helps himself without being asked.

‘Who said anything about Fords? I’m talking about Caterpillars. What do you say to that?’

‘You’re lyin’,’ comes from Wolf before he remembers the first rule of buying: show no interest in what is being offered.

Porta opens a tin of beef, without asking permission, and shovels the contents down his throat with his bayonet.

‘Where you keepin’ these Caterpillars?’

Porta finishes off the tin before replying and is obviously enjoying Wolf’s impatience.

‘
I
haven’t got ’em. I just happen to know where they’re at just now.’

‘We’re wasting one another’s time,’ decides Wolf, brusquely. ‘You can’t sell something you haven’t got.’

‘
You
do it all the time, Wolf,’ laughs Porta, craftily. ‘Do we get coffee to fill up on after that modest lunch?’

‘I’ll move the bloody shithouse in here for you, if you like!’ snarls Wolf. ‘Get your stinking feet off the table, you bastard. You’ll never learn culture, you! Stickin’ your feet up alongside your host’s plate ain’t gonna make you popular. I did think of offerin’ you a job when we finish the war, but it’d be like lettin’ a ravening pig loose on the unfortunate rest of the world.’

‘Mocca!’ Wolf orders his servant, a former Russian sergeant, to bring coffee, but unwillingly.

‘The man said
coffee
!’ shouts Porta after the Russian.

‘Since getting to know you I’ve been converted to the Tory party, an’ boy how I do hate the socialist gutter proletariat,’ rumbles Wolf, sourly.

‘I drink only Java,’ roars Porta, without feeling himself insulted in the slightest.

‘Java? Where in the hell do you think I’d be able to get Java from?’ lies Wolf.

‘Get the shit out of your ears, Wolf,’ laughs Porta, confidently. ‘You picked up three sacks of Java a month ago. You can fool the entire German army all the time but me you can
never
fool, chum!’

‘Ain’t Santos good enough for you? The poor, persecuted German people’d give their
bollocks
for one cup of Santos. There’s some of thé
Herrenvolk
who ain’t ever even
tasted
Santos.’

‘You’re a really wicked man, you
are
, Wolf!’ Porta smiles winningly. ‘In the first place I am
not
one of the poor, persecuted Germans you mentioned before. Between you, me and the gatepost they can all get fucked as far as I’m concerned. I’d sell them, the Fatherland and all it contains,
including
flags, to neighbour Ivan tomorrow. I don’t
want
your bitter Santos shit. I want Java. And, friend, if
I
don’t get it now,
you
won’t have any left in stock tomorrow!’