The Commissar (16 page)

‘We ain’t got any nails.’ protests Gregor, weakly.

‘Shit some, then,’ orders the Old Man.

Tiny jumps up, clicks his heels together, and lifts his pale grey bowler courteously.

‘We ’ear an’ obey, ’Err Feldwebel,
sir
!’ he trumpets.

‘Cut that play-acting
out
!’ snarls the Old Man. viciously. ‘There’ll be early parade tomorrow mornin’! All illegal weapons to be handed in! Anybody running round with enemy guns’ll be for it!’

‘For it!’ echoes Tiny.

For a second it looks as if the Old Man is going to throw himself at him. Then he gives up. The energy of his anger seeps out of him. He drops down on to a creaking bed, runs his hands through his hair, and begins to fill his pipe.

‘What a shower of shit you lot are,’ he mumbles, looking round at us.

We dig the common grave in the park. There is no more room in the churchyard.

The Old Man sits on the remains of a pedestal, on which a statue once stood, and blows out great clouds of tobacco-smoke.

Porta and Tiny are sorting bodies, and talking quietly to one another.

‘You as much as look at a gold tooth, and I’ll shoot you!’ The Old Man aims at them threateningly with the stem of his pipe.

‘Perish the thought,’ lies Porta, with one finger inside the mouth of a corpse. Tiny stands ready with the forceps.

‘Two in this one,’ whispers Porta. ‘Wait till he’s down in the grave before you take his savings. Then the Old Man can’t see it. How many we got?’

‘A lot,’ answers Tiny. More than five is a lot where he is concerned.

The partly decayed body of a woman slips from my hands as I pass it on to Heide and Gregor. They are down in the grave lining up the bodies regimentally.

Heide goes amuck when the heavy corpse knocks him over into the middle of the grave. Snorting with rage he throws a torn-off arm at me.

‘You did that deliberately! God help you when I get hold of you!’

I hide behind a toolshed, and stay there until he goes off the boil. He is mad enough to carry out his threat.

We have to dig two more common graves. There are many more dead than we had thought.

During the sorting process Tiny comes to an SS-Haupt-sturmführer
who has had the lower part of his body shot away. Since orders are that parts of bodies are to be buried together with the person to whom they belong, Tiny begins to search for a pair of legs which could fit the Hauptsturm-führer’s body. Not finding them, he takes two torn-off legs which, by the boots, must have belonged to a Russian officer.

Porta scratches his stiff red hair doubtfully, and looks critically at the legs, with their Russian riding breeches and high brown boots.

‘Don’t really fit, do they?’ he says, spitting over the edge of the officer’s grave. ‘If they ever open this one up, they
will
be confused. They’ll think it’s a wrong ’un they’ve run across. An SS officer who was going to desert and had started changing into Ivan’s uniform. No it won’t do, my son. We’ll have to get him a couple of German legs!’

‘I’ll ’ave another look, then,’ grunts Tiny patiently, crawling, with difficulty, up out of the grave. He stops in a kneeling position on its edge, and turns an ear toward the low-hanging clouds. ‘
Jabos
!’ he shouts. ‘Bleedin’ arse’oles,
Jabos
!’

Porta stretches his neck. His cunning, foxy face snifTs towards the east.

‘
There
!’ yells Tiny. He is back in the grave like lightning, and burrows down between the bodies.

They seem to jump up from behind the trees, and, with a nerve-shattering roar, they pass over our heads. Their stubby wings sparkle as they rise vertically into the sky and come back round for a return run. They open fire with all their automatic weapons: machine-guns and light cannon. Hundreds of spurts of dust fountain up from the ground, as the projectiles whip across the park. Two of the machines bank, and fly along the row of open graves. They are so low that the faces of their pilots can be clearly seen.

I drop down flat on my face behind the toolshed. A machine-cannon salvo splinters into it, throwing all kinds of dirt and muck over me. I turn my face up for a moment to
see where the battle-planes have gone to.

Both machines seem to rear up on their tails in the air. They describe a great arc and come roaring back at us. This time they drop bombs. The shattering noise of the explosions almost burst our eardrums. The earth shakes. Clods of earth and stones rain down on me.

Someone gives out a long, rattling scream. It drowns in the roar of the Jabos, as they attack again. The projectiles spitting from their wings seem to roll up the asphalt path like a carpet.

The machines flash over us again. More bombs fall; deafening us.

They come in twice more. Then they fly off towards the east, back to their base.

We wish everything far, far away, as we start in again collecting bodies.

Tiny finds a pair of German legs which will do for the Hauptsturmführer.

It is far into the night before we have finished filling in the graves. We sit down, tiredly, on the soft earth of one of the common graves. The vodka bottle goes from hand to hand. We are soaked in sweat despite the biting cold of the evening.

The Old Man is sitting with Barcelona, sorting dog-tags. German here, Russian there. They put them separately into large bags, and tie the service books of the dead men in bundles. There are also letters. A lot of letters. Barcelona unfolds one and reads it aloud:

My beloved boy,

It is a long time since I heard from you. Did you get my parcel? There is a woolly sweater in it to keep you warm. Don’t forget to change your socks if you get your feet wet. You know how you are with colds. Claus the foreman’s son who you went to school with is back from the Army. He lost one arm but they are not sending him home. When his leave’s finished they are putting him on barrack
duty. Even the ones who lose a leg aren’t getting sent home now. We had an air-raid alarm again yesterday. They dropped some bombs on the railway station and they say it’s flattened. I’m going down there this afternoon with Mrs Schröder to see how bad it is. Now look after yourself won’t you. Now your dad’s gone I’ve only got you. I’m glad you’re on a part of the front where there’s not a lot happening. Mrs Schultzes two boys are in a place where a lot of terrible things are going on but we mustn’t talk about that. Our new Gauleiter is very strict and hard on people who talk too much. They came and took our neighbour Mrs Schmidt in the middle of the night because she talked about something called
Nachiund Nebellager
. So you have to be careful what you say. My dear, darling boy, it’s twelve months since you went away but thank God you’ll be getting leave in two months time. I am counting the hours. Write soon. I get so disappointed when the postman goes by and there’s no letter for me. I know you’re not allowed more than one letter every eight days, but promise me you’ll write then at the least.

See you in 58 days time.

Your loving

Mother

‘Shit!’ says Tiny, as Barcelona refolds the letter and places it inside the soldier’s service record book.

‘Up you get,’ commands the Old Man. coming to his feet. ‘Sling arms! Broken step! Follow me! Quick march!’

Chatting as we go, we walk in a disorderly column down a narrow path. We keep to its sides, under the shelter of the trees, in cover from the air.

‘Shall I cook the grub when we get home,’ offers Porta, from the darkness under the trees. By ‘home’ he means the factory hall we have taken over for our quarters. ‘I’m going to do us “Pork Chops à l’Alba”,’ he goes on, enthusiastically. ‘It’s a dish that Kings an’ Emperors prize highly.
Orthodox Jews do it with beef cutlets, but that spoils the effect. It needs character to do “Pork Chops à l’Alba”, I can tell you. First of all it’s out in the fields and find your shallot onions. These you have to chop very fine, and the right song for doing that to is the “Georgian Harvest song”. When they’re nicely chopped up, you sprinkle ’em, with an elegant flip of the wrist, with parsley, sage, salt an’ pepper. But, for heaven’s sake,
black
peppers! The man who uses
white
pepper should have the devil let down through his throat with a roll of barbed wire on his back! Then you make small cuts on each side of your pork chops with a good sharp knife. I usually use my combat knife. It’s always got a good, sharp edge to it. I prefer to hum “The Song of the Volga Boatmen” during the next operation, which is rubbing the onion mix into the pork. Now we come to the next step, which can be difficult. Borrow some butter from your next-door neighbour, which, of course, you never intend to pay back. A lot of people live high on borrowing from their next-door neighbours. It’s cheaper an’ also saves storage space. The butter you’ve borrowed you then melt. Take your pork chop between two fingers, I recommend the thumb and forefinger of the right hand, and dip half of it in the melted butter. Turn it, then, on a fire-proof dish for about ten minutes. After this, you pour your wine over it, but light an’easy.
Don’t
drown it! The chops only need to be slightly, but happily, intoxicated. Whip in the remainder of the borrowed butter and pour the sauce over the meat.’

‘What
kind
of wine?’ comes Gregor’s voice from the back of the section.

‘White, of course, you excuse for a driver!’ snaps Porta.

‘Any special sort?’ Gregor enquires.

‘How that fool goes on! You can see he’s been around generals too long! Use what you’ve
got
. The main thing is it’s white, and what’s left of it you drink yourself.’

A despatch-rider comes round the bend ahead of us at top speed and stops in front of the Old Man, who is out in the middle of the narrow path with his arm raised.

‘Russian tanks, Herr Feldwebel!’ shouts the despatch-rider, straddling his motorcycle. ‘Coming this way to get back to their own lines. Orders from Regimental HQ. Stop and destroy!’ With a roar the motorcycle is off again.

‘God damn and set fire to it,’ rages the Old Man. ‘
Tanks
, and we’ve got the job of wiping ’em out! Of course! Who else?’

Tiny takes a sausage from his pocket, snaps it in two and gives Porta half.

‘There’s some blood on it,’ he apologizes,’ but they say as blood gives a feller strength!’

‘Where’d you get it? asks Porta, suspiciously.

‘From a dead un’,’ answers Tiny, chewing on his half of the sausage.

‘What kind of a dead un?’ asks Porta, sniffing at his half.

‘Russian bleedin’ lieutenant,’ mumbles Tiny, looking towards the trees.

‘The sausage ought to be all right then. Officers only eat top-class stuff,’ says Porta, taking a large bite.

‘Come on,’ orders the Old Man. ‘Things’ll soon be humming. Get your magnetics ready! Stovepipes in the lead! We attack from the right of the road, and don’t let me see any itchy trigger fingers. Wait for the order!’

‘We getting anti-tank support?’ asks Heide, pompously.

‘Yes, up your arse,’ Porta laughs noisily. ‘If they’d got anti-tank guns to spare, they wouldn’t send us, now would they?’

Part way into the wood we meet a couple of sections from 7 Company. They are wildly excited, and go on about hordes of Russian tanks.

‘And they’ve infantry with ’em,’ shouts a Feldwebel to the Old Man. ‘2 Company’s been steam-rollered to bits. Not a dry eye left in the lot!’

‘Sounds pleasant,’ answers the Old Man, with a short laugh. ‘But that’s what we’re here for. To kill or be killed.’

‘Down!’ shouts Barcelona hoarsely, as half a dozen flares suddenly open up in the sky, making everything as light as
day. The whole section is flat on the ground before he has finished saying the word.

An SP comes rushing along at top speed, bumps over the top of the hill and lands with a jangling crash on the far side.

‘Up with you,’ bawls the Old Man. ‘Move! Open line abreast! March! March!’

The section spreads out and lumbers, panting, across the uneven ground. I have the MG under my arm, supporting it on my hip. My finger is along the trigger-guard. My heart is beating so fast it is almost painful. I go rushing straight through some bushes, which tear at my face and hands. Blood runs down.

A little way in front of me Porta is running, his idiotic yellow topper on the back of his neck. Down in the valley the SP wheels round as if the driver had gone mad. The night fills with heavy thuds and brilliant muzzle-flashes. They give light enough for us to be able to glimpse half a score of T-34s. The SP stops with a jolt, and replies to the fire immediately.

From a row of ruined houses, long bursts of Russian Maxim bullets rush at us.

Some of the rookies throw themselves to the ground, and try to creep away from the hell of fire.

‘Get
up
! Get
on
!’ roars the Old Man, striking at them with the barrel of his mpi. ‘Who the devil told you to fall down?’

Breathing heavily we break into a run. We are now not much above a hundred yards from the closer of the T-34s.

Blue-green lightnings flame from the muzzles of Russian machine-pistols: Maxims spit wicked yellow flashes as they pepper us with their deadly, pearly chains of tracer.