A Bitter Harvest

by Peter Yeldham

  ‘Sigrid?’

  ‘I saw him,’ she said, emerging from the shop. She called down the street, ‘Stefan, come in for kaffee.’

  Stefan kept walking. He seemed not to hear.

  Inspector Lucas came out the screen door of the station, aggrieved and impatient. ‘You again? What the hell do you want this time?’

  Stefan made no reply. He emptied the gruesome figure onto the tiled verandah floor, the entrails, dried blood and bayonet with it. Lucas stepped back from the repellent stench.

  ‘Shit!’

  ‘I sent my son, asking you to come and see what was in my paddock. What some maniac put there to scare my wife.’

  ‘Get this bloody mess out of here,’ Lucas said. ‘Sorry, Inspector, it’s evidence.’

  ‘It’s filthy. It stinks.’

  ‘My son was told you were too busy — and if I had a complaint to bring it here. Well, there it is.’

  Lucas stared at the offensive sight with acute distaste. ‘Animal guts, blood, and — is that a real bayonet?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is it yours?’

  ‘Of course it’s not mine.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Inspector, I’m the one making a complaint.’

  ‘Against who?’

  ‘Whoever did this.’

  ‘And who might that be?’ Lucas asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Then how can you make a complaint?’

  ‘Isn’t it your job to find out who left this?’

  ‘My job, Muller,’ Lucas said with deliberate arrogance, ‘is to keep the peace. Not waste time on squabbles between neighbours. I’ll keep the bayonet, and you clean up this filth and get rid of it. And don’t bother me again.’ He extricated the bloodstained bayonet and took it inside.

  Stefan knew that further protest was pointless. He cleaned up the putrid mess, and after he had disposed of it, crossed the street to the chemist shop. In their living quarters Sigrid provided him with hot water and carbolic soap, then handing him a cup of steaming coffee, insisted he remain. Oscar had come upstairs from the shop, so they could talk. He looked at Stefan with a deepening concern. He could tell how the incident had affected him. But despite the provocation, Oscar still felt any response was a mistake.

  ‘It’s unwise to attract attention these days. Best to stay quiet.’

  ‘I won’t stay quiet,’ Stefan said. ‘I’ve been quiet since the war started. What has it got me?’

  ‘Freedom.’

  ‘Is that what you call it?’

  ‘It’s safest not to antagonise,’ Oscar insisted.

  ‘And what? Hope no one notices you?’

  ‘It may not be very brave,’ Oscar said, ‘but it’s sensible.’

  Stefan sipped his coffee with difficulty, barely able to hold the cup, his hands were shaking so uncontrollably with anger.

  They came in the night. Weeks later. Two of them. They stopped at the Apotheke and slapped paste on the window. They affixed caricatures of bestial ape-like German soldiers, stamping on the faces of cowering girls. When they had covered the window with these, they forced the lock and went inside. One held a torch, while the other began to smash the medicine jars and dispensing bottles.

  There was no attempt to do this surreptitiously. Quite the contrary. They heard a movement from above, and the light on the landing came on. Oscar Schmidt appeared in his pyjamas, fitting on his rimless glasses as he came down the stairs. He only had time to see that the two intruders wore sacking hoods, with eye holes cut in them, time barely to begin shouting a protest, before the glasses were ripped from his face and crunched beneath a foot. Then he was punched and knocked to the floor, where a heavy boot kicked him.

  Sigrid screamed, and one of the assailants looked up to see her on the landing. He ran swiftly to reach her, two steps at a time, and held her by the hair while he punched her until her cries of terror became whimpers of pain. Before they left, the two smashed all the plate-glass shelves, leaving a carpet of crystal shards. They walked out to the silent street, where the sounds of destruction and Sigrid’s screams must have been audible to half the town — but windows stayed dark, and the street remained empty.

  It was a town frozen into paralysis by fear. People stayed inside their houses, ashamed, trying to reassure themselves, trying to, believe that if the chemist or his wife were hurt, they would seek help. After all, they were one of the very few in the district who had a telephone. They did not know the instrument had been ripped from the wall.

  When daylight came and townsfolk emerged nervously from their homes, they saw the shop window blanketed with the odious caricatures, and the door to the premises wide open. The less timid approached, to witness the devastation inside. Bruno Heuzenroader, the blacksmith, crunched across the broken glass in his heavy boots, and found Oscar Schmidt unconscious beneath a debris of smashed medicine bottles. He found Sigrid, her face barely recognisable, her arm broken, lying on the stairs. She was conscious, but in a state of disabled shock. He ran to fetch the local doctor, Keith Hardy, who took one look and requested the police be called immediately.

  It was Sergeant Oelaney who arrived an hour later, claiming he had been busy investigating a prowler reported at the Carsons’ dairy. By this time, Dr Hardy had sent for an ambulance, and treated the cuts and bruises on Sigrid’s face, trying to comfort her. He assured her all the lacerations would heal, but privately doubted if the scars would fade.

  Hardy was young, and new to the district. He had been in the first landing at Anzac Cove, and later wounded and invalided home. He had seen a great deal of horror on the heights of Gallipoli, but the callous and spiteful savagery of the attack on the chemist’s wife shocked him deeply. Making a temporary splint for her broken arm, which would suffice until she could be admitted to hospital, he then examined Oscar and found he was severely concussed, cut by fragments of glass, and three of his ribs were almost certainly broken.

  He saw them both into the ambulance, and gave instructions for their removal to the cottage hospital. He was about to follow in his own car, when Inspector Lucas arrived to join Delaney. Lucas shook hands with him.

  ‘Very glad of this opportunity to meet you, Doctor.’

  He asked for the details. Dr Hardy said that he was needed at the hospital. Enough time had already been wasted and both required urgent treatment. The sergeant had the necessary facts.

  Lucas pronounced it a nasty business. A lot of bad blood between these German people, he explained. This was typical of how they behaved. The doctor would no doubt understand, Lucas said, since he had apparently been in the army and fought the hun at Gallipoli.

  ‘We fought Turks,’ Hardy said abruptly. ‘I think you ought to be searching for the thugs who did this, Inspector, not drawing unlikely conclusions. It’s obvious that whoever attacked the Schmidts was not a German. Take a look at the window.’

  ‘Could be deliberate,’ Lucas said. ‘Put there to confuse us.’ Hardy gazed at him with growing dislike.

  ‘You’re a bloody idiot,’ he said, ignoring the other’s look of outrage as he went to his car.

  ‘Just a moment, Doctor,’ Lucas called. ‘We don’t use that sort of language here. Perhaps you’ve forgotten, but swearing in public in this country is a punishable offence. And swearing at a police officer on duty will land you in a lot of trouble.’

  Dr Hardy drove off without a reply, following the ambulance and his patients to the hospital.

  ‘So that’s the new doctor,’ Lucas said, staring after him. ‘Looks like the war might have left him a bit shell-shocked.’

  Elizabeth sat with Sigrid and tried to comfort her. She and Stefan had not heard the news until late morning, and had driven to the hospital. They were horrified at the sight of her battered face. The swelling had increased until she was almost unrecognisable, and in great pain.

  It was in the ward that they met the new doctor, who had completed his rounds; and returned to check on their condition. Dr
Hardy reluctantly agreed that Oscar, now his ribs were strapped and his cuts treated, could go home, but he wanted Sigrid to remain overnight. He was worried about her, not so much her injuries, which were serious, but more her reaction to the night’s attack. He was relieved when Elizabeth said she would sit with her for as long as she was needed, and sleep at the hospital if a bed could be found. She explained Sigrid had been her friend for years, since she came to work for them in Hahndorf; had helped bring up their children and they regarded her as one of the family. If the doctor could use his influence to get her a private room, Elizabeth personally would be very grateful.

  The doctor used his influence. Within the hour, Sigrid was given her own small room, with an extra bed for Elizabeth to stay overnight. Stefan drove Oscar back to the Apotheke. Dr Hardy watched them leave through the window of Sigrid’s room.

  ‘He should really be staying. He still has slight concussion.’

  ‘Then why let him leave?’

  ‘Some patients fret more in here. Any good I do will be offset by worry about his pharmacy, so it’s better he goes there to look after things. He’ll have a shocking headache tonight.’

  ‘At least he’ll have lots of aspirin close by,’ Elizabeth said. They both smiled, and the new doctor, who needed to confide in someone, felt he could tell her about his first encounter with the police.

  ‘You weren’t impressed?’

  ‘They didn’t give a damn. How can they behave that way?’ Elizabeth asked him where he had been lately.

  The Dardanelles, he told her. Then a long spell in a Cairo hospital — as a patient.

  ‘You were in the Medical Corps on Gallipoli?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It must have been terrible.’

  ‘Thank God,’ he said, surprising her.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘To find someone who actually realises it was terrible. Most of the people I meet think it was exciting, something not to be missed. I’ve even had some say they wished they’d been there.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s because the newspapers here told us it was a great triumph.’

  He was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘It was, in its own particular way. A triumph of courage over impossible odds. It was very heroic. But heroism isn’t enough, not when the plan is so flawed and stupid that the enemy is waiting.’

  ‘As bad as that?’

  ‘Worse. A debacle, apart from the evacuation, but I can’t tell many people the truth. It’s not what they want to hear.’

  When he had left, promising to visit again after evening surgery, Elizabeth thought the district had done rather well with their new physician. The previous doctor had been there many years; he had grown obstinate and combative, and would certainly not have shown such concern for Sigrid. This man was an agreeable change.

  Bruno Heuzenroader had constructed a new steel bolt for the front door, and cajoled some of the neighbours into helping clear up the mass of broken glass. They were scrubbing the window, when Stefan arrived with Oscar. Against his protests, Stefan made him go upstairs to rest, then went to assist with the tidying up. It took them another hour before the worst of the damage was repaired, and some order restored. The stock losses would be considerable.

  Stefan wrote out a sign that the shop would be open for business in the morning as usual. He asked Bruno if the police had any idea who did it. Bruno looked at him with incredulity, then he laughed. It was a laugh without humour.

  ‘If they knew, you think the pigs that did this would come to any harm, Stefan? Do you really imagine anything would happen to them — like being brought to court and charged?’

  They saw Lucas approach.

  This slimy bastard would pin a medal on ‘em,’ Bruno said, deliberately speaking loudly in German, then spat and walked away.

  Lucas studied Stefan, with his same intent scrutiny. ‘What was that he said, Muller?’

  ‘You’d have to ask him, Inspector.’

  ‘I’m asking you.’

  ‘Sorry. It was a private discussion,’ Stefan said, surprising himself with his own boldness.

  ‘I’ll remind you speaking German is against the law.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Stefan answered. ‘I’ll do my best to remember.

  But when laws seem so unjust, it’s difficult to obey them, because we don’t know why they exist. A priest says his prayers; a man talks to another — are these now acts of treason?’

  Lucas kept staring at him, hearing the anger and contempt, and unable to believe it. Stefan gazed back, refusing to be cowed. ‘I wouldn’t talk like that, if I were you,’ Lucas advised.

  ‘Don’t you think the police would be better employed trying to find who vandalised this shop, and bartered a defenceless woman?’

  ‘I think you’d better shut up, Muller — right now, before you get yourself into real trouble.’

  ‘So nothing will be done? No real attempt to find the criminals?’

  ‘There are no suspects. If I were you, I’d leave. Go home.’

  ‘Is this another new law? I’m not permitted to visit and help friends who are attacked?’

  ‘I’m trying to say, keep out of things that don’t concern you.’

  ‘My friends being violently assaulted — this concerns me, Inspector. Especially since there are, as you appear to be insisting, no suspects.’

  ‘You’re a bloody idiot, Muller.’ Inspector Lucas stared at him angrily.

  He turned and strode away. Johann Graetz came from his shop, together with others who had witnessed the encounter.

  ‘Stefan, Stefan,’ Graetz shook his head. ‘That was madness.’

  ‘It’s best to stay quiet,’ said Eisa Schubert, the milliner.

  ‘Staying quiet,’ Stefan said, ‘is what Oscar did.’

  ‘Calm down, Stefan,’ another shopkeeper told him.

  ‘We don’t need trouble,’ Graetz said.

  ‘Johann, you’ve already got trouble. How many broken windows, how much humiliation does it take to realise that?’

  ‘What do you ask of us?’

  ‘A little courage. Some guts. Enough to say — stop. You’re not going to frighten us any longer.’

  ‘Easy to talk, Stefan,’ another shopkeeper said angrily. ‘But how do we do this?’

  ‘Complain.’

  ‘To who?’

  ‘The government,’ Stefan said. ‘The people we elect. Make them hear us. Tell them every time we are attacked, the police look the other way.’

  There was a chorus of disapproving murmurs. A small crowd had gathered around him. A far from amiable crowd. ‘Go home, Stefan,’ someone said.

  ‘Yes, go home. Stick to making wine.’

  ‘Leave us out of it,’ said another.

  ‘That’s good advice.’ Graetz nodded. ‘Stay out of trouble.’

  ‘Johann, you make me sick. You all make me sick. Everyone of you is frightened.’

  ‘Maybe we have good reason.’

  ‘What hope have we got,’ Stefan demanded passionately, ‘if we turn the other cheek? We’re people, for God’s sake. This is our country. We chose to make our homes here, didn’t we?’

  There was barely any response. They wanted to be left alone.

  ‘Now they take away our rights. Blame us for a war on the other side of the world. How can that be just? How can we allow it?’

  That evening when he came to the hospital, they sat with Sigrid for a time, then walking to the car with him, Elizabeth expressed her concern.

  ‘Why are you saying these things?’

  ‘Someone has to.’

  ‘No, Stefan. Not you.’

  ‘Yes, Elizabeth, me. It made me ashamed — seeing them all so afraid.’

  ‘I’m afraid,’ she said.

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of you. And what you intend to do.’

  ‘It is a time for heroes … the great moment of your lives … put the fear of God into Kaiser Bill … don’t forget, Australia promised the mother country: “t
o the last man and the last shilling”.’

  It was almost the same speech, William thought cynically, as he stood in the Domain and listened to James North’s ringing voice.

  There was a cheer from the crowd, but the spark, the enthusiasm was lacking. In the several years since William had first heard that speech, the country had sickened of the slaughter. Such phrases were no longer stirring people to enlist. ‘The last man and the last shilling’ had become a regrettable slogan, to many a colonial cringe never quite shaken off.

  William hated the phrase. He hated the perception the wording itself suggested, that Australia was still amere possession of the Empire, and when those in Whitehall said Britain was at war, then by implication and legal allegiance, Australia must follow. It was a slap in the face to him and all the others who had fought so hard for Federation and renounced imperialism. It enraged him the Labor Party so subscribed to this mythology. They were in power and had been since the war’s beginning. Andrew Fisher had coined the phrase. Now he was gone and Billy Hughes was Prime Minister, and James North, who stepped so deftly from one political philosophy to another, was in Hughes’s Cabinet.

  William, at the back of the crowd, remembered the time he was in the Cabinet, when the concept of decimal currency had been proposed, and how Britain had vetoed it. That was back in 1904. It had been one of the first indications the Colonial Office in London had not given up; they had simply shrugged and indicated that the game would henceforth be played by new rules.

  He waited for the crowd to drift away, and the organisers to leave. It had been a long time since he and North had met, and they had scarcely parted as friends. The constraint was still visible, as they met and shook hands.

  ‘A good speech, James.’

  ‘I think you’ve heard it before. The same old flag-waving cliches.’

  ‘Even so. It seems effective.’

  ‘One does one’s best,’ North said. ‘We all have to help.’

  More pompous than ever, William thought, trying to conceal his dislike. He managed a sinile of agreement.