“What else have they got to do?” Reinhart asked toughly. He field-stripped his own cigarette and hooved it into the ground.
“What do you have against them?”
“A private grudge,” said Reinhart, “that’s my own damned business. Well, if we have to walk, that makes it easy, no choice.” He rebloused his pants, tightened his belt, adjusted the jacket, made his cap smart, and, ready for any D-Day, motioned Schild to take the lead.
Once they were out of the rubblefield and in the open gray streets gulching the ruins, Schild fell back beside him in an aesthetic revulsion against captaining one man all the way to the Grunewald Forest. With no one before him to control the pace, Reinhart increased his stride, measuring off a yard per step. Schild fell behind. On the bicycle path of the Hohenzollerndamm, in Wilmersdorf—they were beyond the congestion and, hence, the worst damage, on a wide thoroughfare becoming suburban, with streetcar tracks, bounded by greenery and particular rather than mass ruins—Schild leaned against a poster-pillar and took air.
Marching with loud slaps of his rubber soles, head fixed as if he were in ranks, Reinhart went on unheeding. Schild watched him for a hundred yards in the light of Berlin’s dawn, which came early in the small hours—therefore it was later than he had supposed. Reinhart would soon look back. On a childish impulse Schild stepped behind the pillar and waited. The footsteps rapidly tramped beyond earshot.
He found that inadvertently he had kept Reinhart’s veteran Fleetwoods. Going in through the cellophane and limp pasteboard, his fingers made inordinate noise, and had he still been a nervous man he might have mistaken the sounds for those of someone creeping out of ambush behind him. He fired his cigarette and took a lungful of corrosive smoke, toying with a paradox: the one man he knew who was the ambush type had least need of concealment. In proof of this he saw Schatzi standing nearby on the sidewalk, hiding in the open air and light, a concrete apparition.
“I have followed you like a sickly conscience,” said his courier, who wore a motley of olive-drab clothing.
“You are out of uniform,” Schild answered, laughing softly. “If the MPs come along I can have you arrested.”
“I’m doing you no harm,” Schatzi said in some worry. Then he smirked weakly. “Come Fritz, you make the joke with your old comrade with whom you have already deceived, so that I am in trouble across the boundary.” He pointed over his shoulder. “The Russian is gone, ja?”
Schild asked: “Do I throw off an odor, that you can follow me with your nose?”
“Perhaps you will not believe, what can one do?” He shrugged. “Having some business on the Tauentzien Strasse—very well, being exact, in the basement of the KaDeWe—ah Fritz, what a pity that excellent compartment store must be bombed!” Tears coursed the runoffs on either side of his crag-nose. “Ah, Fritz, I must confess I have had a drop—I am in my glasses, as it were.” He wove across the bicycle path and rested against the pillar. “Verzeihung, Herr Litfass! ...Why should I care about this ugly place? What have they done to my Nürnberg? Because I am not Saupreuss, a Prussian pig, beileibe nicht. Pure Bavarian, verfluchte Scheiss!”
His American overseas cap was pulled low and round as a sailor’s. His nose began to run; he cleared it onto the dark green of his new field jacket in two short swipes marking the chevrons of snot-corporal. “From the Ranke Platz I saw you creeping over the ruins with that oaf and I thought, this Fritz has lost his Russian fairy-boy and got him a nice young American in its stead. You have been foolish, Fritz, and they know about it—they know everything—you don’t deal now wiss stupid Nazis.”
He reached for Schild’s sleeve and, missing, fell to the ground on his hands, yet caught himself arched, and backed spiderlike till his rump was against the pillar. From the point of contact he rose inch by inch along his spine, cleaving to the shaft.
Erect, coughing vacantly, he whined: “They killed my dear dog, Fritz, with a machine pistol shot him through the head. That is their kind of people! I loved that creature, to which they should not have done this harm. I gave to him food from out my own mouth.”
Schild began to walk away, in peace.
“Come again here and listen, you bit of turd!” Schatzi screamed. “In Auschwitz I liquidated better men as you by the thousands. Du kannst mich im Arsche Lecken.”
“No,” said Schild, calmly smoking, “no, you did not. You only buried them. You were forced to, you yourself were a prisoner.”
“ ‘Forced to,’ ” Schatzi repeated drunkenly. “I carried a club, Fritz, but one must be careful how hard one beats them, or the SS will rage with jealousy and take the post away. Then too, these thin bones were easily cracked, which meant the job would be nonsense because they must remain strong enough to dig—I always knew you were a double agent, didn’t I always say so? You yourself are Intelligence! Pity me, Fritz, they have murdered my dog. Dirty Russians! It unsecured itself from the chain and came by my heels already, unknown to me until I was stopped by this sentry at Sergeyev’s building. The dear dog has been thinking, ‘Ah my master is attacked!’ He sprang at the soldier and the Russian shot him.”
“I am sorry. Really I am,” said Schild.
“Brown on the outside, red on the inside like a beefsteak, we were in the early Sturmabteilung. We had many similarities to the Communists, Fritz. Idealism, we were idealists, and we died for it—like the Jews. We were the first Jews. Thus I can understand you. I too hate this filthy Germany.” He wiped his nose again, promoting himself to snot-sergeant. “You are a soldier, but you were shrewd enough to get for yourself a safe position behind the lines of battles. Why should you not, if you are clever enough? I do not criticize. In the Great War I was not a shrewd fellow like you, but a simple foot-soldier. Just see this.” He raised his trouser cuff and lowered the stocking. “Verdun, February 1916”—a blind, purple hole in his calf. He opened the jacket sleeve and that of the wool shirt beneath it, and drew back the arm of heavy, dirty underwear: “Verdun, September 1916” —a masticated chicken leg was his left forearm. “August 1918, mustard gas in the lungs, the forest of the Argonne. As you known, I still today cough. While I collected these thanks, I must not tell you what was occurring behind our back in Germany, you would believe me insulting to you and your peo—no, one does not say that, but there existed fat swine who profited by our blood. And when after the war we went to settle wiss them, these Nazis killed us instead. Berufsverbrecher, professional criminal, I am called in the camp—” The liquid discharges of the eyes and nose left prison-bar traces on his dusty face.
Schatzi continued the catalogue of wrongs done him, and Schild thought, they are as real as anyone’s, as Reinhart’s, as his own: who among us is not a Jew?
He said: “All right. Now you’d better get yourself together. Perhaps you can find another dog—”
“The only thing in years I wished to love!” Schatzi threw his head back against the pillar and unabashedly wailed.
Twice tonight Schild had been chosen to hear a candid heart; it was the old choice and fitted his old gift. For the first time he knew it as a tribute to what he was, or what they supposed him to be, and perhaps after all these were one and the same. If Hitler had not died in the Chancellery garden he would one day seek Schild out and tell him, weeping, of being twice denied a career in art by the academic examiners; rejected by his sweetheart niece who then blew out her life; a bum in a Vienna flophouse, befriended by a Jewish old-clothes dealer; gassed in the war; and, finally, of his last defeat as the Red Army swarmed over the Spree. And Schild would say, All right, Hitler, we shall weep together.
To Schatzi he repeated: “Collect yourself, man. Sergeyev will have your head if you are reported drunk.”
Immediately Schatzi dried from within and became one hard instrument of suspicion. “Whom did you say?”
“Sergeyev. You just mentioned going to Sergeyev’s building—”
“Ah, but did I mention why?” He fell into his usual semi-crouch, which put his head four feet off g
round, and Schild, who had always believed this the stance of attack, realized at last its purpose was rather to make Schatzi a small target.
With supreme distaste, but nothing else would serve, he grasped Schatzi’s jacket and pulled him upright and vulnerable. “The next time you see him, report that Fritz is finished.” He watched the red respect flood Schatzi’s eyes. “Do you understand?” Schatzi trembled in admiring assent. “If you do not tell him, I shall let Corporal Reinhart beat you to death.”
“This great beast?” whispered Schatzi.
“All I have to do is nod to him.” Schild released his grip, requiring all his muscles to hold his face stern. “He also knows your story and, because he is a gentile, holds a grudge. Do you remember a Dr. Otto Knebel in Auschwitz?”
“They all looked alike to me,” Schatzi answered without thought, then taking a sober one: “Perhaps he was in Monowitz, another section of the camp from mine.”
“He remembers you.”
“Maybe he lies. The SS marched them out to Germany when the Russians approached, and who would survive such an ordeal? Lucky, I escaped. Luckier yet, you were never there in any case.” He was returning to his old self, with both relief and disappointment at Schild’s apparent decision not to molest him further. “But accept from me this warning, Fritz. Serg—they do not recognize luck. And they have also their camps. You did better to transfer from Berlin, where they can easily get at you, before playing the renegahd.”
Without feeling, Schild said: “I’m no renegade. You can also tell him I won’t talk.”
“Fritz,” said Schatzi. He came close in a reek of liquor, eyes drifting: “I have some regret for mistakes in my life. Wiss my family was not the love you Jews have for each another. You can not understand how my father was beating me always. I have had another dog at ten years of age. My father struck that dog to death when it slipped its chain and entered the house and fed upon his slippers.”
Behind him Schild heard the noise of a vehicle in Hohenzollern Platz.
“Was that in Nürnberg?” he asked.
Schatzi was caught up short, made his eyes keen, and answered: “Precisely. Do you know the city? In the Altstadt, below the cahstle wall.”
“Near the Dürerhaus?”
“In fact, overlooking,” Schatzi answered. “I have heard Dürer’s house is kaputt from the bombing. Is it so?”
“I don’t know. I have never been there.”
“Dürerhaus, Scheisshaus, what should we care, eh Fritz?”
Schild backstepped from his camaraderie, turned and saw the jeep bumping over the streetcar tracks. It was now as light as an overcast afternoon. The tall MP beside the driver saluted, and Schild knew a moment’s qualm. But it was not he who arrested Lichenko.
“You want a ride, Lieutenant? Is that crumb bothering you? Hey Hitler, spricken see English?” He smacked his billyclub into his palm. “C’mere. I’ll give you some democracy right in the nuts.”
“He’s with me,” said Schild, officerly factual, showing his ID card. “If you drive on down this street you will see a corporal. I want you to give him a lift if you are going that way. He too was with me on official business, so don’t bother him about a pass.”
The MP obsequiously lowered his club. Likely had he seen Schatzi alone, he would not even have made the threat; he wished merely to be appreciated.
“I hope,” Schild continued nevertheless, “you don’t speak in that loose fashion to every German you meet. You might run into an anti-Nazi.”
Again the MP assented, careful in his policeman way to give excuse without a show of confusion. “I didn’t know there were any.”
“Neither did I,” said Schild. “But we can’t let that make a difference.”
The jeep snorted down the vacant Hohenzollerndamm.
“You Amis are strangest of the strange,” said Schatzi. By means of the MP’s menace he had regained full dignity. “This I first believed was a weakness of the mind, and next for me it was a sinister thing. Finally, I see, and it is harmless: you really believe that you are the master race.” This time he wiped his nose on a handkerchief. “The Germans, you know, never did, and least of all when this crazy sissy Adolf, and this cripple Goebbels, and that fat Zeppelin with the large mouth Goering, told them they were. A German knows he is not anysing. Instead for a time he thinks that they are, Adolf und Gesellschaft. Never himself. A French waiter makes a German feel like an ox. An Englishman makes him feel ill dressed. His great philosophers either talk so he cannot understand them, like Hegel, or tell him what a disgusting lout he is, like Nietzsche. And then there are the Jews, always so clever and so successful. See the magnificent land where they run things, America! ...Fritz, I am speaking earlier of my mistakes. I work for the Communists because they force me. When I am a young man I spilled much of their blood, but now I am old and weak. Unless I serve they will denounce me to the American police—this thing with Röhm and the early SA. I will be treated like a Nazi, ja? At least this way I am free. But can you get me to America, I shall not inform them you will go. Is it an honest arrangement?”
“Perfectly,” said Schild, “except that I don’t get a profit. Now I’ll make you a deal. First, you report to Sergeyev that Fritz is done. Second, you make certain I never see you again. On my part I’ll keep Corporal Reinhart from killing you. Now”—he seized Schatzi and turned him around—“that way is east. Go already, in peace and freedom.”
Schatzi went, looking back from time to time with the reproach and puzzlement of an exiled pet, but going. Schild watched him as far as the Platz and, reminded by his animal progress, pitied him again for the loss of his dog.
Reinhart was at Roseneck, Rose Corner, when he heard the jeep engine and, because his permanent pass was good not later than 0100 hours, he crept into an empty beer garden and hid behind a tree. The car made the turn and vanished into Rheinbabenallee. Emerging, he saw the darkness of the Grunewald woods a couple more football-field lengths down the street. He had lead in his ass and his feet were aflame. Distances elsewhere standard, in Berlin were triple; and he had taken no real exercise in years. As well he was a chair-medic, the Rangers and paratroopers were lucky not to have him. He regretted having pulled on ahead of Schild, for not only was he tired, he was lonely. But the Jews and their mad pride, he would never learn to cope with it.
Crossing Kronprinzenallee at last, he saw where someone had chopped down a tree in the Grunewald. He walked in and sat on the fallen trunk. He searched in vain for a cigarette, but the Pall Malls were at Bach’s, the Fleetwoods with Schild. No matter, his lungs were weak enough. He struck himself in the chest and coughed histrionically, feeling a certain softness in the pectorals. Weight lifters out of training develop breasts like women, look worse than the ninety-pound weaklings they originally were, he remembered. Undoubtedly the same thing happens to the muscles of the trained mind: in time intellectuals’ heads grow flabby. The morality of Puritans becomes mushy. Life mocks those who try.
Now that he had found Kronprinzenallee he knew the way home: straight down it about fifty miles to Argentinische Allee, around that crescent about halfway, another twenty, until you reached a patch of trees and sandbags and excavations, traversing which you came finally upon the farthermost limbs of the detachment headquarters building. Trudchen would be long gone to the bosom of her family, obeying her parents’ ukase against staying in bed with a man after ten o’clock at night. He had his joke; actually, she told them she had to work overtime at the office. They were, he supposed, a typical German familial unit, of which he should make a sociological investigation—except that he knew all about normal people, who are everywhere the same.
Rest in his condition only made it more difficult to return to movement. He checked the blouse of his trousers, that precise indicator of a soldier’s smartness—Schild, for example, had he worn boots would have stuffed the cuffs crudely into their mouths and buckled the straps. The contraceptive around his right boot proved to be frayed. He took a
new one from his watch pocket, peeled it, tied it in place. The Kraut who found the discarded rubber would never figure it out.
Ready to move, he saw in Hohenzollern’s distance the insignificant form of Lieutenant Schild, walking steadily, nothing ambitious but with a certainty in his carriage that he would get there, wherever it was. A tough little guy, in his own way. If I could be like Schild, Reinhart believed, I would not complain. So he waited for him.
Arriving, Schild said: “The MPs didn’t find you?”
Reinhart boasted: “I was too quick for them.”
“They were going to give you a ride.”
“I can make it all right. Why didn’t you take one?”
“I have an aversion to the police.”
“You and me both.”
“I wanted to ask you,” said Schild, “what are you going to do about your friend Nurse Leary?”
“That’s a difficulty.” He was getting nervous again at having to walk so slowly. “Let her go to hell, I guess. Except that I gave my word.”
“What do you owe huh?” Schild asked, New Yorkly.
“Nothing whatsoever. That is exactly why I cannot go back on my word.”
“I’d think it would be the other way around.”
Reinhart felt the newly arranged cuff working loose with his stride. Screw it. He smiled down at Schild and said: “What you mean is you thought I would think so. But I don’t. It would be letting the other fellow decide what you yourself should feel. I never have been able to stand that. That’s what I like about the Army, where you are told what to do and eat and wear, but never what to think and feel. Everybody but me seems to hate it, on the grounds that it takes away their ‘freedom.’ When did you last see a free man in civilian life?” He pushed back his sweat-heavy cap and snorted. “Look at me. I alone am right. Ha! Join the Reinhart Party!”
Crazy in Berlin Page 38