The Commissar (8 page)

The Russians behind me throw hand-grenades. The night lights up with their explosions.

Porta and Tiny come rushing towards me. I throw myself down to avoid their rattling machine-pistols.

The Old Man is behind them. Close behind him come others.

A wild, bloody hand-to-hand fight begins. I rip a
Kalash-nikov
from the hands of a dead Russian lieutenant, and begin to fire blindly at whatever is in front of me.

We thirst for blood and revenge. We
want
to kill. We are happy to have hit the hated enemy in the back.

A bare-headed Russian corporal stands in front of me, with both hands above his head. I empty half of my magazine into his chest, and smash the butt of my weapon into his face.

Suddenly everything is still. The fighting is over as suddenly as it began. Some minor skirmishing, the report will say.

Porta has a bottle of vodka in his hand. He pulls the cork with his teeth, takes a long, gurgling swig at it, and gives out a long, rolling belch. The blood comes back into his thin cheeks, and his eyes begin to look more lively. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Then he bends down and picks up a rifle-grenade. He screws off the cap, and puts the grenade into his pocket. Ready for use, if we run into any more surprises.

With mpis at the ready, and fingers on their triggers, Porta and I jump through a street-door, ready to mow down anything moving. We know that those left behind in such towns are crazy fanatics, totally insane, completely regardless of their lives as long as they take some enemy soldiers with them.

Silently we sneak along the walls of the houses, straining our eyes to pierce the dust hanging in the air. I strangle a cough, afraid to give away our position to some madman
waiting with his finger on the trigger.

The first room is empty. The next one, too.

Quietly, I catfoot up a narrow spiral staircase. My heart seems to stop beating for several minutes when a heavy hand falls on my shoulder. Luckily I am so frightened that I forget the weapon in my hands.

‘Mustn’t shit in Adolf’s trousers, now,’ whispers Tiny, calmingly. ‘It’s only me! If it’d been Ivan you’d ’ave been kissin’ the angels in the arse by now!’

‘Lord preserve us! You nearly frightened the life out of me, ‘I stammer, knocking his hand away, roughly.

‘Look what I found,’ he says, happily, holding up an oblong box filled with cigars for me to see. ‘A bleedin’ colonel belongin’ to the neighbours was sittin’ there dead with’is’and on top of it when I come by.’ With a flourish he places one of the fat cigars in his mouth and lights it with a lighter made out of a bullet casing.

‘You must be mad, ‘I whisper fearfully. ‘With everybody out there lying in wait, ready to shoot our heads off, you . . .’

‘Worth dyin’ for a good cigar,’ says Tiny, calmly. He holds his primitive lighter above his head like a torch, and looks inquiringly around him.

The staircase creaks treacherously, as we tiptoe on up it.

‘Rotten old shit,’ he rages, kicking noisily at a loose plank.

Porta is waiting for us on a landing with a half-empty vodka bottle in his hand. He takes a long swig at it, before handing it on to Tiny, who leaves only a drop for me.

‘Anybody here?’ I cough, nervously, from the fiery spirit.

‘How should I know?’ asks Porta. ‘Think I’m a bloody clairvoyant or somethin’, p’raps?’

‘We’ll soon find out,’ says Tiny, taking a couple of heavy drags on his cigar, and sticking his head out of the door-opening, like a Red Indian trying to look round corners. ‘Hey, Ivan there!’ he roars in a voice which echoes through the house. ‘Come on out you
tovaritsches
. We got somethin’ nice for you.’ He thumbs off the safety on his LMG and waves the muzzle about. ‘Not as much as a limp prick,’ he chuckles and enters the room with long, confident strides. It
is a mess of shattered furniture. Shards of porcelain and glass crunch under our hob-nailed boots.

A doll, of the kind which can open and close its eyes, lies in the middle of the floor. Porta picks it up and places it carefully on what is left of an old-fashioned sideboard.

The sweet, sickly stench of death hangs over the whole house.

An LMG rattles wildly out in the street. Two others start up. Mortars plop. The sounds die away again into a waiting silence in which death watches from every hiding-place.

‘Hell, my arm hurts, ‘I complain, trying to roll my sleeve up.

‘Where?’ asks Porta. ‘Let’s have a look at it.’

‘Gawd, you’re bleedin’,’ says Tiny, opening his eyes wide. ‘Who’s cut you, then?’

‘Must have been down in that rotten trench, when those murderous swine jumped down on me, ‘I answer.

Porta puts on a dressing, first washing the wound with some beer from an opened bottle standingon the sideboard.

‘That’s quite a slash they give you there,’ says Tiny, pityingly. ‘’Ave a officer’s cigar will you? It’elps.’

I shake my head, and bite my lips with pain as Porta scrapes the long knife-cut clean.

We continue slowly on through the house with machine-pistols at the ready. In the attic we find a double bed with a body lying on it. It is swollen up and lies with staring, glazed eyes.

Tiny pushes at it inquisitively with his bayonet.

‘You nuts, or somethin’? Head full o’ earth, is it?’ Porta scolds him. ‘Put a hole in him, an’ we get corpse-gas straight up in our faces. We won’t be able to stand ourselves. Take a look if he’s got any gold teeth, but careful!
Don’t
bloody puncture him.’

Tiny opens the dead man’s mouth, with the mien of a professional dentist.

‘Not a sod,’ he says, shaking his head, sadly. ‘Proletarian shit with steel teeth. Them bleedin’ Commies knows’ow to do the people in the eye, all right. The bosses gets gold in
their kissers, an’ the coolies’as to make do with bleedin’ iron. An’ that’s what they call equal rights? I ain’t never goin’ to turn Commie. You can put that in the soddin’’eadlines!’

Most of the roof has been burnt, and we can see the dark sky through it. A flare explodes into a spreading white flower of light. Immediately, the heavy guns begin to thunder. A row of red fireballs blinks into existence.

‘Jesus’n Mary,’ shouts Tiny clattering rapidly down the narrow spiral staircase. ‘The neighbours are comin’!’

Plops and crashes intensify, as a rain of shells falls on the town.

I almost fly through the door and throw myself flat down into what I hope is cover, but turns out to be the remains of two Germans. My stomach rolls over and I puke heartily. I beat at my clothing in a hysterical attempt to rid it of the human rubbish.

‘Take it easy,
mon ami, c’est la guerre
,’ drawls the little Legionnaire. In one long jump he is beside me. ‘It is only more human offal on the muckheap of the war.’

After a short while the artillery fire dies away. Only the mortars continue to plop away, dropping their shells around us.

A couple of Maxims bark angrily, sending lines of tracer along the street.

‘Where the hell they shooting from?’ asks Gregor in wonder. ‘Can’t see their muzzle-flash anywhere.’

‘The wicked sods are shooting through tent canvas, ‘Porta explains, knowledgeably.

Three tank grenadiers come running noisily, weighed down by field equipment, and throw themselves down, panting, alongside us.

‘Feldwebel Groos,’ one of them introduces himself, putting his new-looking steel helmet straight.

‘Obergefreiter, by the grace of God, Joseph Porta,’ grins Porta, raising his yellow topper slightly.

‘Fuck off, you silly sod,’ snarls the Feldwebel, inching away as if Porta had the plague.

The sucking noise of a mortar bomb sounds again. It falls a little way in front of us. A spout of water goes up and a red fire hydrant goes spinning across the street to smash against the wall just behind Tiny.

I hunch down behind the LMG, my stomach cramping with fear. I drop my head and rest the rim of my helmet on the stock of the weapon, afraid to look up.

Another flare wobbles into the sky. The sound of the shot rings in my ears. It is the Feldwebel of grenadiers who has sent it up.

‘What in the name of all the devils in hell are you up to, you dopey idiot?’ rages the Old Man. ‘D’you want the whole of Ivan’s blasted army on our necks?’

‘’ Ead-full o’ rotten, bleedin’, cat-shit’s what ’e’s got,’ growls Tiny, looking wickedly at the grenadier Feldwebel. ‘Want my advice, Old Un’, you’ll cut’is balls off!’

‘Who do you think you’re talking to, Obergefreiter?’ explodes the Feldwebel, in a fury. ‘Can’t you see
these
? You’re talking to a Feldwebel. I’m putting you on report for speaking improperly to a superior!’

‘Shut your arse, mate. Tie a knot in your prick, ‘Tiny suggests from the darkness, cackling with laughter.

‘I won’t stand for this,’ bellows Feldwebel Grooss. ‘I demand that this man be punished.’

‘Get out of here’fore I shoot you,’ hisses the Old Man, irritably. ‘Nobody invited you. This is 2 Section, and you’ve nothing to do with us here!’

‘This
is
the same war, ‘Feldwebel Groos says, defensively, staring furiously at the Old Man.

‘Got cloth ears have you? Didn’t you hear the man? He said to beat it,’ shouts Porta, happily. ‘Are all Saxons as hard to dance with as you? To hell, Fido! Get back in your basket an’ go to sleep!’

‘Don’t you let ’em talk to you like that, sir,’ says a tall grenadier with a voice as thin as his body, and a uniform still stinking of depot moth-balls.

‘Ivan’ll be here any minute an’ shoot your backsides off,’ says Gregor with a long, happy whinny of laughter.

‘Up on your feet! We’re moving,’ decides Groos, sharply. He gets to his feet with the air of a leader of men, and does not hear the treacherous whine in the air. We hear it and press ourselves down as close to the ground as we can get. ‘Cowardly pigs,’ he just manages to get out, before an 80 mm shell explodes right in front of him.

His body is silhouetted briefly against the glare of the explosion. The shell blast cuts him in two, and sends the upper half of his body, with binoculars and steel helmet, far off to one side and through an open door.

‘Christ a’mighty!’ shouts Tiny. ‘’ E was lucky that bleedin’ door was standin’ on the jar. ’E
woulda
got one on the nut if it’d been shut!’

‘What do we do now?’ ask the other grenadiers, looking uncertainly at the Old Man.

‘Find yourselves some good Russian cunt,’ suggests Porta, pleasantly, ‘and fuck yourselves out of this world war. That’s the best way, short of gettin’ out of it alive!’

‘Get back where you came from,’ orders the Old Man, brusquely. ‘I don’t want you here with my section!’

Grousing, they get to their feet and disappear into the darkness.

Quite slowly the firing dies away, and a waiting, threatening silence falls over the ruined town.

Swearing and grumbling we pick up our automatic weapons and our heavy equipment, and trudge on.

I swing the LMG up onto my shoulder, and wipe melting snow and mud from my face.

‘God love us, but it’s cold’n wet,’ says Gregor, as he folds up the tripod legs, and blows on his fingers, which are blue with cold.

With his machine-pistol in the crook of his arm, like a man carrying a shovel, and his wet helmet pushed back on his neck, the Old Man rolls along bow-leggedly in front of 2 Section.

‘Come on, my sons! Let’s see if we can’t find the Red Army an’ get the war over quickly,’ Porta emits a death’s-head laugh. ‘That’s what we left home for!’

‘What a bleedin’ life,’ sighs Tiny, tonguing his cigar over to the other corner of his mouth, and shaking the snow from his light-grey bowler with a great sweep of his arm. ‘No sensible bloke ought to be forced into livin’ through every-thin’ as goes on in a fuckin’ world war like this’n,’ he moans, pessimistically.’

‘Know what I’d like?’ asks Gregor, impulsively, as he trudges along close to the walls of the houses. ‘I’d like to visit General bloody Arse-an’-Pockets, and stick a grenade into his fucking bed. God rot him, I would! Then I’d stand outside an’ watch the fun when the little sod hit the ceiling along with the
Kraft durch Freude
*
whore he was sleepin’ with.’

‘Get on, get on,’ the Old Man pushes along impatiently. ‘What the devil d’you think you’re getting paid a mark a day by the Army for?’

Some Russians get up and come to meet us with arms stretched above their heads. But others, who were with them, disappear into the darkness, throwing grenades behind them as they run.

Tiny kills eight men in one long burst which seems to go on forever. He crushes the skull of an officer, who is screaming, ‘
Stalimo
!’

The section halts near a burnt-out corn silo. It is still smoking a little, and it is nice to warm oneself at it.

Soon we begin to feel alive again.

I throw myself down behind the LMG in a heap of blackened corn. Gregor lies alongside me, flat on his back. His eyelids flutter. He blows a tiny pin-feather away from his face.

The Old Man stares gloomily into space. He knows there are thousands of kill-crazy men all around us, out there in the darkness.