The Young Lions (9 page)

Noah stepped back. The mouth hung open, pitiful and pale under the swirling white moustaches, under the noble arch of the deceptive dead head on the grey pillow.

Finally, and for the first time, Noah wept.

CHRISTIAN felt like an impostor, sitting in the little open scout car, with his helmet on his head. He held his light automatic machine-pistol loosely over his knees as they sped cheerfully along the tree-bordered French road. He was eating cherries they had picked from an orchard back near Meaux. Paris lay just ahead over the ripples of frail, green hills. To the French, who must be peering at him from behind the shutters of their stone houses along the road, he looked, he knew, like a conqueror and stern soldier and destroyer. He hadn't heard a shot fired yet, and here the war was already over.

He turned to talk to Brandt, sitting in the back seat. Brandt was a photographer in one of the propaganda companies and he had hitched on to Christian's reconnaissance squadron as far back as Metz. He was a frail, scholarly-looking man who had been a mediocre painter before the war. Christian had grown friendly with him when Brandt had come to Austria for the spring skiing. Brandt's face was burned a bright red and his eyes were sandy from the wind, and his helmet made him look like a small boy playing soldiers in the family backyard. Christian grinned at him, jammed in there with an enormous corporal from Silesia, who spread himself happily over Brandt's legs and photographic equipment in the cramped, little seat.

"What're you laughing about, Sergeant?" Brandt asked.

"The colour of your nose," Christian said.

Brandt touched the burned, flaked skin gingerly. "Down to the seventh layer," he said. "It is an indoor-model nose. Come on, Sergeant, hurry up and take me to Paris. I need a drink."

"Patience," Christian said. "Just a little patience. Don't you know there's a war on?"

The Silesian corporal laughed uproariously. He was a high-spirited young man, simple and stupid, and apart from being anxious to please his superiors, he was having a wonderful time on his journey across France. The night before, very solemnly, he had told Christian, as they lay side by side on their blankets along the road, that he hoped the war didn't end too soon. He wanted to kill at least one Frenchman. His father had lost a leg at Verdun in 1916, and the corporal, whose name was Kraus, remembered saying, at the age of seven, standing rigidly in front of his one-legged father after church on Christmas Eve, "I will die happy after I have killed a Frenchman." That had been fifteen years ago. But he still peered hopefully at each new town for signs of Frenchmen who might oblige him. He had been thoroughly disgusted back at Chanly, when a French lieutenant had appeared in front of a cafe, carrying a white flag, and had surrendered sixteen likely candidates to them without firing a shot.

Christian glanced back, past Brandt's comic, burning face, at the other two cars speeding smoothly along on the even, straight road at intervals of seventy-five metres behind them. Christian's Lieutenant had gone down another parallel road with the rest of the section, leaving these three cars under Christian's command. They were to keep moving towards Paris, which they had been assured would not be defended. Christian grinned as he felt himself swelling a little with pride at this first independent command, three cars and eleven men, with armament of ten rifles and tommy-guns and one heavy machine-gun.

He turned in his seat and watched the road ahead of him. What a pretty country, he thought. How industriously it has been cared for, the neat fields bordered by poplars, the regular lines of the ploughing now showing the budding green of June.

How surprising and perfect it all had been, he thought drowsily. After the long winter of waiting, the sudden superb bursting out across Europe, the marvellous, irresistible tide of energy, organized and detailed down to the last salt tablet and tube of Salvarsan (each man had had three issued with his emergency field rations in Aachen, before they started out, and Christian had grinned at the Medical Department's estimate of the quality of French resistance). And how exactly everything had worked. The dumps and maps and water just where they had been told they would be, the strength of the enemy and the extent of his resistance exactly as predicted, the roads in precisely the condition they had been told they would be. Only Germans, he thought, remembering the complex flood of men and machines pouring across France, only Germans could have managed it.

Really, Christian thought playfully, at a time like this I should be humming Wagner. It is probably a kind of treachery to the Greater Third Reich not to be singing Siegfried today. He didn't like Wagner very much, but he promised himself he would think of some Wagner after he got through with the clarinet quintet. Anyway, it would help keep him awake. His head fell on to his chest and he slept, breathing softly and smiling a little. The driver looked over at him, and grinned and jerked his thumb at Christian in friendly mockery for the benefit of the photographer and the Silesian corporal in the back. The Silesian corporal roared with laughter, as though Christian had done something irresistibly clever and amusing for his benefit.

The three cars sped along the road through the calm, shining countryside, deserted, except for occasional cattle and chickens and ducks, as though all the inhabitants had taken a holiday and gone to a fair in the next town.

The first shot seemed to be part of the music.

The next five shots wakened him, though, and the sound of the brakes, and the tumbling sensation of the car skidding sideways to a halt in the ditch next to the road. Still almost asleep, Christian jumped out and lay behind the car. The others lay panting in the dust beside him, He waited for something to happen, somebody to tell him what to do. Then he realized that the others were looking anxiously at him. In command, he thought, the non-commissioned officer will take immediate stock of the situation and make his dispositions with simple, clear orders. He will betray no uncertainty and will at all times behave with confidence and aggressiveness.

"Anybody hurt?" he whispered.

"No," said Kraus. He had his finger on the trigger of his rifle and was peering excitedly around the front tyre of the car.

"Christ," Brandt was saying nervously. "Jesus Christ." He was fumbling erratically with the safety-catch on his pistol, as though he had never handled the weapon before.

"Leave it alone," Christian said sharply, "leave the safety-catch on. You'll kill somebody this way."

"Let's get out of here," Brandt said. His helmet had tumbled off and his hair was dusty. "We'll all get killed."

"Shut up," Christian said.

There was a rattle of shots. Slugs tore through the scout car and a tyre exploded.

"Christ," Brandt mumbled. "Christ."

Christian edged towards the rear of the car, climbing over the driver as he did so. This driver, Christian thought automatically, as he rolled over him, hasn't bathed since the invasion of Poland.

"For God's sake," he said irritably, "why don't you take a bath?"

"Excuse me, Sergeant," the driver said humbly.

Protected by the rear wheel of the car, Christian raised his head. A little clump of daisies waved gently in front of him, magnified to a forest of prehistoric growths by their closeness. The road, shimmering a little in the heat, stretched away in front of him.

Twenty feet away a small bird landed and strutted, busy with its affairs, rustling its feathers, calling unmusically from time to time, like an impatient customer in a deserted shop. A hundred yards away was the road-block.

Christian examined it carefully. It was squarely across the road in a place where the land on both sides rose quite steeply, and it was placed like a dam in a brook. There were no signs of life from behind it. It was in deep shadow, shaded by the rustling trees that grew on both sides of the road and made an arch over the barricade. Christian looked behind him. There was a bend in the road there, and the other two cars were nowhere to be seen. Christian was sure they had stopped when they heard the shots. He wondered what they were doing now and cursed himself for having fallen asleep and letting himself get into something like this.

The barricade was obviously hastily improvised, two trees with the foliage still on them, filled in with springs and mattresses and an overturned farm cart and some stones from the near-by fence. It was well placed in one way. The overhanging trees hid it from aerial observation; the only way you'd find out about it would be by coming on it as they had done. It was a lucky thing the Frenchmen had fired so soon. Christian's mouth felt dusty. He was terribly thirsty. The cherries he had eaten suddenly made his tongue smart where it had been burned a little raw by cigarettes.

If they have any sense, he thought, they will be around on our flanks now and preparing to murder us. How could I do it? he thought, staring harshly at the two felled trees silent in the enigmatic shadow a hundred metres away, how could I have fallen asleep? If they had a mortar or a machine-gun placed anywhere in the woods, it would be all over in five seconds. But there was no sound in front of them, just the bird hopping beyond the daisies on the asphalt, making its irritable, sharp cry.

There was a noise behind him and he twisted round. But it was only Maeschen, one of the men from the other two cars, crawling up to them through the undergrowth. Maeschen crawled correctly and methodically, as he had been taught in training camp, with his rifle cradled in his arms.

"How are things back there?" Christian asked. "Anybody hurt?"

"No," Maeschen panted. "The cars are up a side road. Everybody's all right. Sergeant Himmler sent me up here to see if you were still alive."

"We're alive," Christian said grimly.

"Sergeant Himmler told me to tell you he will go back to battery headquarters and report that you have engaged the enemy and will ask for two tanks," Maeschen said, very correct, again as he had been taught in the long, weary hours with the instructors.

Christian squinted at the barricade, low and mysterious in the green gloom between the aisle of trees. It had to happen to me, he thought bitterly. If they find out I was asleep, it will be court-martial. He had a sudden vision of disapproving officers behind a table, with the rustle of official papers before them and he standing there stiffly, waiting for the blow to fall.

"It's damned helpful of Himmler, he thought ironically, to offer to go back for reinforcements. Himmler was a round, loud, jovial man who always laughed and looked mysterious when he was asked if he was any relation to Heinrich Himmler. Somehow it was part of the uneasy myth of the battery that they were related, probably uncle and nephew, and Sergeant Himmler was treated with touchy consideration by everyone. Probably at the end of the war, by which time Himmler would have risen to the rank of Colonel, mostly on the strength of the shadowy relationship, because he was a mediocre soldier and would never get anywhere by himself, they'd find out there was nothing there at all, no connection whatever.

There was no movement behind the barricade. It lay low on the road, its leaves flicking gently now and again in the wind.

"Keep covered," he whispered to the others.

"Should I stay?" Maeschen asked, anxiously.

"If you would be so kind," Christian said. "We serve tea at four."

Maeschen looked baffled and uneasy and blew some dust out of the breech of his rifle.

Christian pushed his machine-pistol through the daisy clump and aimed at the barricade. He took a deep breath. The first time, he thought, the first shot of the war. He fired two short bursts. The noise was savage and mean under the trees and the daisies waved wildly before his eyes. Somewhere behind him he heard grunting, whimpering little noises. Brandt, he thought, the war photographer. For a moment, nothing happened. The bird had disappeared and the daisies stopped waving and the echoes of the shots died down in the woods. No, Christian thought, of course they're not that stupid. They're not behind the block. Things couldn't be that easy.

Then, as he watched, he saw the rifles through chinks high in the barricade. The shots rang out and there was the vicious, searching whistle of the bullets around his head.

"No, oh no, oh, please no…" It was Brandt's voice. What the hell could you expect from a middle-aged landscape painter?

Christian made himself keep his eyes open. He counted the rifles as they fired. Six, possibly seven. That was all. As suddenly as they had begun they stopped.

It's too good to be true, Christian thought. They can't have any officers with them. Probably half a dozen boys, deserted by their lieutenant, scared, but willing, and easy to take.

"Maeschen!"

"Yes, Sergeant."

"Go back to Sergeant Himmler. Tell him to bring his car out on to the road. They can't be seen from here. They're perfectly safe."

"Yes, Sergeant."

"Brandt!" Christian didn't look back, but he made his voice as cutting and scornful as possible. "Stop that!"

"Of course," Brandt said. "Certainly. Don't pay any attention. I will do whatever you say I should do. Believe me. You can depend on me."

"Maeschen," Christian said.

"Yes, Sergeant."

"Tell Himmler I am going to move off to my right through these woods and try to come up on the block from behind. He is to cross the road where he is and do the same thing on his side with at least five men. I think there are only six or seven people behind that barricade and they are armed only with rifles. I don't think there's an officer with them. Can you remember all that?"

"Yes, Sergeant."

"I'll fire once at them, in fifteen minutes," Christian said, "and then demand that they surrender. If they find themselves being under fire from behind, I don't think they'll do much fighting. If they do, you're to be in position to block them on your side. I'm leaving one man here in case they come on up over the barricade. Have you got all that?"