The Cross of Iron (20 page)

He muttered under his breath for a while until Steiner appeared in the doorway and urged them all to hurry. They regarded him in amazement. The Russian uniform had radically changed him. He looked broader, and even his face seemed different. Harder than ever, Dorn thought, studying him.

‘Don’t gape like idiots,’ Steiner said. ‘If you mess around here much longer we’ll have a Russian regiment on our necks.’

The men thronged through the front door. They had wound the leggings around their calves; the long blouses fell down to their thighs; on their heads they wore their usual visored caps with the edelweiss insignia. Their swollen packs tugged at the straps. Steiner and Krüger went in to the prisoners, while the others watched, shaking their heads. They began striding back and forth, grimacing and strutting like women trying on new dresses. Hollerbach chatted with Dorn and Schnurrbart.

‘I’m glad he came back,’ Schnurrbart said.

Dorn looked uneasily toward the window of the prisoners’ room. ‘If he shoots them I’ll transfer to another platoon,’ he said.

‘You’ll have to be back with battalion to do that,’ Hollerbach reminded him. He ran his thumb along under his collar. ‘To tell the truth, I don’t like this business either. But I keep telling myself that we come first and the women second.’ The others did not say anything. Hollerbach blinked up at the sun. ‘Nice weather today,’ he went on. ‘It’s beginning to feel a little like spring at last.’ 

Schnurrbart shrugged. ‘If I were back home I wouldn’t care if it were as cold as the North Pole.’

Hollerbach sighed. ‘I’d be content if we were back with battalion. Stinking business, Zoll. What was that bird thinking of?’ Hollerbach fell silent and looked over toward the bridge, where the reeds swayed above the surface of the water. He suddenly remembered the trip he had taken to Würzburg with Brigitte. It had been a Sunday outing. After they climbed up to the old castle they sat on a bench and looked down upon the city below them. The bells of the cathedral and the Neumünster Church rang out. The hills across the Main River seemed to be rocking gently under the shadow of the vineyards, rocking up and down into the deep blue of the sky. ‘I wish I could come here often,’ Brigitte had said.

Hollerbach smiled a bitter painful smile as he remembered that. He had had to save every
pfennig
for over four months in order to spend this Sunday in Würzburg with Brigitte. They had had little money at home. His father lived on a small pension; his mother had been an invalid for the past three years. Now things were even tighter; his brother had been killed on the Central Front last year. Who could say how it would all end? As a boy, he had dreamed of having a great deal of money, of owning a car and seeing the world. But the world had too soon become for him a narrow funnel with its point at Mudau, and there had been no escape from it. His horizon extended no further than the edge of the woods beyond the small church, where the mountains reached to the sky and effectively blocked all yearnings. He could already see his future, sitting behind the counter of a railway ticket office as his father had done all his life, dully regarding the faces of travellers, annoyed by their stupid questions and their impatience, and having always to be at their service; and then watching them enter the train to ride out into the world, himself always remaining behind, as effectively bound to his little booth as if he were chained there.

He rubbed his eyes and looked hastily around. But no one was paying attention to him. Schnurrbart and Dorn had joined the others. The men were loading the horses with boxes of ammunition. The horses shifted restively. They had straggly manes and small, spiteful eyes. Maag picked up a stout stick of wood and began belabouring them. They kicked out, pranced wildly. Hollerbach shook his head. Those clucks don’t know a thing about handling horses, he thought, and went over to take a hand. Würzburg was again 2, 000 miles away.

Steiner could not have explained the impulse that made him go in to see the prisoners once more. When he and Krüger entered the room, the women were sitting on the floor, their blankets wrapped around them. They stared hostilely at him, and Krüger, too, threw a suspicious glance at his face out of the corners of his eyes. The East Prussian had no intention of playing executioner. If Steiner insisted on killing the women, he would have to do it alone. Steiner, who sensed his thoughts, smiled fleetingly. Now that the male prisoner had escaped, there was of course no point in shooting the women. Perhaps he had never seriously intended to anyway. He really did not know.

He noticed the wounded woman. The other woman had bedded her on several blankets and covered her. Her eyes were open and she was looking at him. As he approached her, the other women shrank away as though he were a carrier of the plague. He stood in front of her. ‘How do you feel?’ he asked.

She did not answer. He suddenly observed that she had beautiful hazel eyes, and wondered why he had not noted this before. ‘When you wear a uniform in wartime,’ he said quietly, ‘you must not expect the enemy to treat you as a woman. Do you understand?’ Although she again did not reply, he could see from her expression that she had grasped his meaning. Stubborn like all Russians, he thought, frowning, and went on: ‘The rest of your uniforms are in the kitchen; you can go and get them. I imagine help will soon be sent to you from Krymskaya.’

With satisfaction he saw her pupils widening in surprise. As he started to turn away, she began to speak. ‘Why do you say that?’ She spoke slowly, in flawless German, her voice was low and resonant.

He looked at her in surprise. What a voice! Suddenly he felt the impulse to hear her go on talking. He took a step closer and said: ‘You know as well as I that there are two missing from this room.’ 

With an excitement inexplicable to himself he watched her raise her head slightly. ‘Vladimir got away?’ she said. It sounded more like a statement than a question. But Steiner nodded anyway. ‘If you mean the man who was here, yes—he escaped.’

The woman turned her head to one side and said something to the other women. Their faces brightened and they exchanged significant glances. Then she turned to Steiner again. ‘You said two.’

‘She is waiting next door, in the other house.’

‘Is she-’ the woman hesitated and her tongue licked out to moisten her lips. ‘Is she all right?’

‘No one ever got sick from that,’ Steiner said cynically.

The woman’s expression darkened. ‘That is not for you to say,’ she answered quietly. ‘A good many have got sick from that, sick here.’ She drew her arm from under the blanket and pointed at her chest.

Slinging the sub-machine-gun over his shoulder, Steiner leaned forward and asked: ‘How is it you speak German so well?’

Her face twitched as she hesitated for a moment. Then she said: ‘I teach the language to children—I am a schoolteacher.’ There was pride in her voice.

‘I see,’ Steiner said. ‘But why should you teach the children German?’

‘Why do your children learn English and French?’

‘Because we have already conquered France and are going to conquer England.’

She nodded quietly. Talking had exhausted her; her face was overlaid with dark shadows. She is going to die, Steiner realized, and the thought was painful. He pushed it away. We must all die, he said to himself, and asked: ‘Well?’

She looked up at him for a second, then closed her eyes. ‘You know the answer,’ she said wearily.

He nodded and straightened up. ‘The day hasn’t come yet,’ he said. ‘It’s still a long way to Germany.’

She opened her eyes again, and there were flickering lights in them. Slowly she turned her head, and her words reached his ears as a barely audible whisper: ‘Not a long way—for us. But—for you.’

He looked down at her dying face. Then he turned and went out. Krüger followed him. In front of the door Steiner stood still for a moment and raised his head. Beyond the bridge loomed the woods, mute and menacing. The gnarled branches had become like the lithe limbs of an octopus, scaled with green leaves and reaching dark shadows across the water to the men on the shore. Steiner shuddered. He passed his hand over his face to wipe away the image. I must be dippy, he thought. Against the sinister curtain of the woods, the dying woman’s last words rang in his mind like an oracle.

There was something else that her voice rather than her words had awakened in him. His heart throbbed and memories scattered in all directions within him. There was another woodland ringing in the oval green of a forgotten meadow. The tall grass danced in the wind, the bluebells swayed, the wild pink blazed among the blossoms of the foam-flowers, while black and cream-coloured butterflies fluttered above them. Towering over the woods rose the spired mountain, grave and powerful, a circlet of white clouds around its granite neck. And a voice was speaking, saying foolish, lovely things, a soft voice, a dark voice, and meadow and woods and mountain and clouds and sky faded at the touch of an impatient mouth. Steiner stood breathing heavily, his face creased with grief. He came back to himself when Krüger placed a hand lightly on his shoulder. The men were standing near the horses; he saw their haggard faces above the Russian uniforms, and he saw the woods again. Slowly he descended the steps and beckoned with his arm. Then he started across the bridge. The men followed, falling immediately into their weary tread, and entered the green shade of the woods.

The wardrobe had been constructed of solid planks. Only on the floor side, where the door now lay, was there a crack the width of a finger, and the moulding on the bottom raised the wardrobe enough off the floor to admit fresh air. Zoll lay on his stomach, his head resting on his arms, his mouth close to the crack. About ten minutes had passed since Steiner had overturned the wardrobe. Zoll did not move. He had knocked his head against the door in falling and broken his glasses. After trying frenziedly to escape the terrible confinement of his wooden cage, he had given up. He still regarded his uncomfortable situation as one of Steiner’s characteristic mean tricks and was expecting the men to arrive any moment and liberate him. He could already see their grinning faces and was framing what he would say to their jokes. Again and again he asked himself how Steiner, of all people, had happened to come into the room just at the wrong time. Perhaps Schnurrbart had only been faking and it had all been a cook-up of Steiner’s just to catch him, Zoll. Just like that bastard. Zoll cursed himself for a fool for having been tricked this way. In helpless rage he clenched his fists.

Lying motionless again, he thought he heard scratching noises. He raised his head to listen. Perhaps it’s the Russian woman, he thought. Steiner had said he would leave her there. Another of his rotten tricks to frighten him. Perhaps the men were already standing around the wardrobe waiting for him to scream for help. Well, he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. On the contrary. He began whistling loudly, and in spite of the pain where the butt of Steiner’s gun had smashed across his face, he smiled at the thought of their astonished expressions.

The heat in the wardrobe gradually became unbearable. He felt as if he were in a Turkish bath, and although he was wearing only his shirt and trousers he began to sweat. He thought of Steiner again. He’ll pay for this, the bastard, he said to himself; one of these days I’ll send a bullet into his spine. Let him croak in agony, the dog.

He gritted his teeth and stared frantically into the darkness. The heat grew worse; finally he opened the buttons of his shirt, pulled down his trousers and turned over on his back. I won’t let them think they can soften me up, he thought. When they get bored waiting they’ll let me out. He closed his eyes and half dozed. Images and words bubbled up out of his memory. He saw himself sitting in the new Mercedes his father had given him for his eighteenth birthday. He saw the faces of the girls who followed the car with their eyes, whose walk slowed to a stop as his car cruised by, and who were only too glad to be invited for a drive. ‘Where shall we drive?’ he would ask, and they would always answer, ‘Anywhere.’ Zoll grinned at the memory. He knew a great many lonely spots which were the ideal destinations for such drives to ‘anywhere’. For a while he revelled in salacious memories, and his excitement returned. He relived his recent experience with the Russian prisoner, and considered how he could have improved on it. It always goes too quickly, he thought discontentedly. He clasped his hands behind his neck and lay that way for more than fifteen minutes. Then he began to worry again. It seemed unlikely that Steiner would spin this thing out so long without the other men protesting. He pulled up his trousers, turned over on his stomach and pressed his ear against the side wall of the wardrobe, holding his breath until the strain was too much for him. It was so utterly silent that his uneasiness turned to fear. Suddenly the terrible thought struck him that the platoon might already have left. He forgot his pride and began to cry out. First he called softly, timidly, then louder and louder, until he was uttering long-drawn-out roars. He crooked his body and beat his heels against the bottom of the wardrobe. He dug his hands into the crack of the door and pulled until his fingers were bleeding. At last he lay still, panting for air. It was becoming more and more of a certainty that Steiner had left him behind, locked up in this wardrobe from which he could not escape without aid from outside.

Throwing himself on his back, he stared into the darkness. Fiery dots danced before his eyes, becoming glowing circles when he closed his eyelids, whirling madly and shooting sparks in all directions when he opened his eyes again. I must not lose my head, he told himself; I must stay very quiet now. He tried to think. Again he thought he heard noises outside. This time there was no question about it. Before he could determine their meaning, the wardrobe in which he lay began to move. Twice he was jolted hard against the wood, and then the daylight fell upon him so suddenly that he closed his eyes, dazzled. Half-stunned, he pulled himself up to a partly sitting position and blinked in surprise and terror at a crowd of mocking faces that were bending over him, at flashing eyes that sent icy chills of terror racing through his body, at rows of breasts bulging out of dirty underwear, and at dozens of hands that reached into the wardrobe, gripped his hair, his clothes, his limbs, pulled him up and hurled him to the floor of the room. As he started to defend himself, his arms and legs were pinioned, his clothes were torn off and a rain of merciless blows beat down upon him. Just above him was the face of the Russian woman he had raped. Her hair hung in tangled strands over her forehead; her eyes gleamed like green glass lighted from within. She did not strike him or berate him as the others were doing. She only stood stooped above him, staring at him in silence. And as Zoll looked into her face, as the blood ran down his forehead, bubbled out of his nose and mouth, as he jerked and writhed under the kicks and punches that struck every part of his body, as he moaned out his torment between clenched teeth and almost but not quite fainted from the pain, he saw nothing but her face above him. He saw her breasts, still bearing the marks of his teeth, her throat branded with bruises, and the pitiless hot fever of her eyes.