by Sven Hassel
Startled, we turned to regard the old lady in her corner. She smiled gently and forgivingly upon us.
‘There is already so much unhappiness and discord in the world,’ she informed us, in her tremulous bleating tones. ‘I beg of you, not to add to it . . . You’re all good boys at heart, but war is a trying time and it plays upon the nerves and makes one behave as one would never dream of doing in times of peace.’ She paused, but we were far too flabbergasted to speak. ‘You must try to follow the example of your excellent chief,’ she told us. ‘Herr Bielert. Such a gentleman, and so very kind. He insisted on arranging for a car to take me home.’ She gave us a charming smile from her puckered old mouth. ‘He was so horrified when I suggested I might walk!’
Tiny opened his mouth to speak, but Barcelona gave him a hard kick in the leg and he closed it again.
The two SD men stood by the door looking foolish. One of them waved a hand at the sheaf of papers.
‘Now perhaps you can understand why we brought her to you?’
‘All right,’ said the Old Man, curtly. ‘Leave her and get out of here.’
The old woman politely shook hands with her two guards, as if she had been paying a social call.
‘Thank you so much for looking after me. And remember, any time you happen to be near Friedrichsberg, drop in and see me. You know my address. I always have a supply of sweets and illustrated magazines to offer my visitors . . . Young people always enjoy my magazines.’
Muttering uncomfortably, they shuffled out. At the foot of the stairs one of them turned.
‘Good-bye, Frau Dreyer.’
He blushed scarlet as he said it. Frau Dreyer raised a gracious hand as the Legionnaire closed and locked the door behind them, putting a barrier between our two worlds: they were the Gestapo, we were the Army, and as far as we were concerned that was the way it was going to stay.
The little old woman opened her bag and pulled out a packet of sweets. She offered them amongst us and we nodded our appreciation and helped ourselves avidly. Tiny, in fact, helped himself twice.
‘Don’t you worry,’ he told her. ‘You’re with the Army now.’ He nodded and winked, and we looked at him apprehensively. You never knew, with Tiny, what he was liable to say next. He was not the ideal companion for a sensitive old lady. ‘We know how to deal with these bastards in the Gestapo,’ he continued, boastfully. ‘Why, I remember once’
He broke off with a loud howl of pain. Barcelona looked at him.
‘I don’t think Frau Dreyer’s really very interested in that sort of thing.’
‘What sort of thing? Why not?’ demanded Tiny, instantly aggressive. ‘I was going to tell her about that time in Pinsk, when we helped those three whores get away from the Gestapo—’
‘Well, sodding don’t!’ snapped Barcelona.
Frau Dreyer herself intervened.
‘Let the poor boy speak. He’s just a big overgrown child, I’m sure he couldn’t harm a fly and I should like to hear his story.’
Tiny looked at her with wide open eyes. Porta sniggered.
‘He’s nothing but a ruddy great liar. He tells lies like you and me eats or sleeps. He does it natural, like. Can’t help himself, if you know what mean. Like for instance, say today was Monday the 19th, he’d tell you it was Tuesday the 20th. Not for any reason. Just out of habit. You can’t ever take what he says to be true.’
‘He’d sell his soul for half a farthing,’ added Steiner.
Tiny was about to protest, in the way which came most naturally to him. He picked up a chair and prepared to bring it down on Porta’s head, but the Legionnaire caught him by the arm and whispered a few words into his ear. The Legionnaire could always work wonders with Tiny. He put the chair down and retired muttering to a corner.
The rest of us, smiling vaguely at the old woman, sat down to play dice. Frau Dreyer watched us a while, and then, to our intense relief, settled herself in a chair and went to sleep.
For half an hour she slept, and then Porta’s loud braying laughter woke her up again. We tried not to notice, but her quavering tones soon floated across to us.
‘If you don’t mind,’ she said, ‘I think I should like to go home now. Do you suppose my car would be ready yet?’
Porta gave a wild yell of glee as he threw six aces.
‘Herr Bielert did promise me a car, you know.’
We gritted our teeth and did our best to close our ears. She was just a stupid old woman who had no idea what the hell was going on. Perhaps she was a congenital idiot, or perhaps she was in an advanced stage of senility. She certainly didn’t seem to appreciate that she was now in the hands of one of the world’s most pitiless judicial systems.
Heide scooped up the dice, shook them energetically, making as much noise as possible, and shot them elegantly across the table. Six aces. As Porta before him, he gave a loud whoop of joy. Then, in silence, he picked them up from the table and prepared for another go.
‘Herr Feldwebel,’ went on the thin piping voice, which was beginning to grate on all our nerves, ‘would it be too much trouble to ask you to see if my car is ready? I really am becoming extremely sleepy sitting here. I should like very much to be taken home now.’
Heide sent the dice flying over the table again. Another six aces. No one said a word. I could feel the tension mounting. Porta licked his lips, picked up the dice and looked at them suspiciously. Heide smiled.
‘Sorry to disappoint you, but they’re not loaded. What you have yet to learn is that it takes intelligence to play this game. An intelligence which some of us have and some of us don’t And just to prove it, I’ll throw you another six . . . double or quits.’
‘Don’t be a fool,’ said Barcelona. ‘It won’t turn up again.’
‘Take a bet?’
Heide grinned, collected up the dice, raised his arms above his head like a prize fighter and gave the leather dice box a good long shake before bringing it down on to the table. He left it there, his hand firmly holding it down, for at least a minute, calmly taking time off to light a cigarette. It was one of Porta’s, but Porta was staring so hard at the dice box he never noticed.
‘Oh, dear, how my poor feet do ache!’ sighed Frau Dreyer, a note of the dreaded self-pity creeping into her voice. ‘I put on my best shoes to come here, and they do pinch me so . . . and I’ve been here since early this morning, you know . . .’
Heide blew out a mouthful of smoke and drummed his fingers on top of the dice box.
‘Come on, come on,’ muttered Steiner. ‘Let’s be having it!’
‘There’s no real need for all this suspense,’ said Heide, smoothly. ‘I can tell you what’s under there without looking: six aces . . .’
‘Like hell!’
Heide smiled sweetly.
‘You don’t believe me? Well, now, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. We won’t make it double or quits, well make it ten times or quits.’
Porta began chewing frantically at a finger nail. He ran a hand through his red hair and screwed up his face in a frenzy of indecision.
This is lunacy,’ declared the Legionnaire. ‘You can’t possibly KNOW that there are six aces under there . . .’
The voice droned on from its corner.
‘It’s two o’clock, Herr Feldwebel. There’s another three hours to go before the trams start up again. What shall I do if the car doesn’t come?’
Slowly, Heide began tightening his grip on the leather dice box. His voice had been quite steady, but I saw the sweat standing out in his hairline. We all leaned forward with him. Tiny had a cigarette hanging forgotten from his lips. Porta had chewed his finger almost to the bone. Any minute now we should know the truth.
‘Are you so sure?’ said the Old Man, not daring to take his eyes off the box and look at Heide. ‘Are you really so sure?’
‘I’m sure,’ confirmed Heide, and a bead of sweat trickled down his top lip and splashed on to the table.
Someone’s rifle clattered to the floor, but our con
centration was intense and the noise scarcely penetrated the outer edges of consciousness.
‘I can hear a car. I can distinctly hear a car. Perhaps it’s come for me at last.’
Frau Dreyer rose from the chair and began buttoning her threadbare overcoat.
Slowly, very slowly, Heide lifted the dice box.
He had thrown six aces.
The tension broke abruptly. Tiny hurled his chair against the wall and pounded both fists on the table. Steiner shouted aloud. The rest of us leaned back and let out our breath in great sighs. Porta tore his fascinated gaze away from the dice and looked up almost pleadingly at Heide.
‘How d’you do it, Julius? Tell us how you do it . . . six aces on the trot! I’ve never seen that in my life before.’
‘Like I said, it takes intelligence.’ Heide wiped the back of his hand across his brow and resumed his usual air of arrogance. ‘If you count up what you owe me, I reckon you’ll find it wipes out my debts to you.’
Porta frowned.
‘I’ll play you one more throw.’
The sweat at once broke out again on Heide’s face. He stared into Porta’s small and greedy eyes and was plainly tempted. But at last he stood up and threw back his chair.
‘Not interested. I’ve done it three times, that’s quite enough. You do it too often, it gets boring.’
‘Balls!’ said Porta. You know bloody well you couldn’t do it again, not if you tried all night!’
Heide shrugged. He could afford to. He looked across at Frau Dreyer.
‘Why did the Gestapo come for you?’ he asked, coldly.
Not that he really cared, but it was one way of silencing Porta.
‘Oh, my dear, it was my neighbour,’ said Frau Dreyer, in hushed tones. ‘She wrote them that I had insulted the Führer.’
We turned round, our attention caught. Insulted the Fiihrer! That could be interesting. Stege leaned towards me and whispered gravely in my ear.
‘The poor old girl could be shot for that.’
We all looked at Frau Dreyer, who had become, quite suddenly, an object of quite incredible wonderment. Not because she was liable to be condemned to death – God knows, we were well accustomed to that – but because she could sit there in all innocence and not realize the enormity of her crime and its probable consequence.
‘How had you insulted the Führer?’ said Heide.
Frau Dreyer touched delicately at her nostrils with a small handkerchief that smelt of lavender.
‘Well, it wasn’t anything really, you know. Or at least, only what everyone else has been saying . . . It was during that very bad air raid we had last year. You remember, they bombed Landugsbriicke and the boarding school behind Bismarck’s statue . . . Frau Becker and I – Frau Becker, that’s my neighbour – we went along to have a look at the damage. And it was then I made the remark which so upset poor Herr Bielert, though really how was I to know, when everyone else had been saying it for days? It was better under the dear Emperor, I said. At least they didn’t fly over in their aeroplanes dropping bombs on us. And in any case—’ she looked at us, sternly – ‘a man like Adolf Hitler, what does he know of running a country? I’m sure he tries his best, but he was born in poverty and he knows nothing of the ways of the world.’
We stared at her in a shocked, incredulous silence. Barcelona swallowed once or twice before speaking.
‘Did you – did you repeat all that to Herr Bielert?’
‘Of course,’ said Frau Dreyer, with a proud lift of her head. ‘ He asked me my opinion, and I gave it. I am not yet too senile to have an opinion, I should hope.’
‘No, but you – you shouldn’t have – you really shouldn’t have—’
Words failed Barcelona. He opened his eyes helplessly at the rest of us, and Porta hunched a careless shoulder.
‘Let’s see what the dice have to say about it . . . will she or won’t she?’
And he ran a finger across his throat and winked ghoulishly at us.
We sat round the table and each one pressed his left thumb against the edge. Heide shook the dice.
‘What’it be?’
‘The little bird on the park railings,’ suggested Tiny.
‘O.K.’
‘One,’ said Steiner.
‘One to six,’ said Porta.
‘One to six,’ we chanted, in chorus.
The dice rolled across the table.
Eight soldiers playing at dice in the cellars of the Gestapo, much as the Roman soldiers, in their time, had played at the foot of a hill near Jerusalem.
‘This is disgraceful,’ said the Old Man, suddenly. ‘Pack it up, for heaven’s sake.’
And he turned his chair round, facing Frau Dreyer, and began speaking energetically about God knows what; anything to keep her attention away from the macabre game that was in progress.
The dice lay on the table: four aces, two sixes . . .
‘She’s had it,’ muttered Barcelona ‘The dice are always right.’
‘Everyone agreed, one to six?’ asked Heide.
Porta nodded.
‘Six for life, one for death . . .’
We looked across at Frau Dreyer. She was earnestly telling the Old Man the history of her late husband.
‘He was killed at Verdun,’ we heard her say. ‘He was in the 3rd Dragoons at Stental. It was nice at Stental, I liked it so much. We had such a good time there . . . My husband was in the Dragoons from 1908 until his death. He fell on the 23rd December 1917. He’d gone out to find a fir tree for Christmas and he was killed by a stray bullet on the way back . . . He was a good soldier and a very brave man. He was with Hauptman Haupt and Oberleutnant Jenditsch, when they took the fort of Douaumont—’
‘Douaumont!’ cried Tiny, his face wreathed in smiles. ‘I know all about Douaumont! The Prussians was only in there for about five minutes before the Froggies threw ’em out again, arse over tit to the other side of the Rhine . . . and you fuck off!’ he added angrily, in Heide’s direction. ‘What are you trying to clobber me for? Keep your sodding great feet to yourself.’
‘Frau Dreyer’s husband was killed at Verdun,’ Heide reminded him. ‘Couldn’t you choose your words more carefully?’
‘It’s only the truth, what I’m saying.’ Tiny stuck out his lower lip, mutinously. ‘You ask anyone if it ain’t.’
‘He’s right,’ said Porta. ‘The Frogs knocked ’em about so bad at Douaumont that the Crown Prince himself was given a right bollocking from the old Emperor.’
Barcelona frowned at him and turned back to Frau Dreyer.
‘What did Herr Bielert say to you, exactly?’
She sighed and frowned and dragged her eyes away from a photograph of Himmler, which seemed to mesmerize her. Across the foot of the photograph, printed in gold letters, were the words:
HEINRICH HIMMLER, Reichsführer of the SS
Chef der Polizei (Head of Police)
Minister des Inneren (Minister of the Interior).
‘Herr Bielert was so kind. He listened to all that I had to say, and I could tell it upset him, and I thought perhaps I’d been offensive in some way, but then he told me it was all over and done with and I wasn’t to bother my head over it any more.’
And she looked back up at Himmler and smiled at him.
‘Did he tell you what was going to happen to you?’ asked the Old Man. ‘Did he write down what you said about Herr Hitler?’
‘Oh, yes, indeed, he was most punctilious. He dictated it all word for word to another gentleman who was sitting in the room with him. I’m afraid I became rather sleepy, I think I must have dozed off, but when I opened my eyes again I found they’d written quite a book between them . . . and then Herr Bielert told me I was to go to Berlin.’
‘To see the Führer?’
‘Oh, dear me, no. I’m sure he’s far too busy to bother with people like me . . .’ She looked again at the photograph of Himmler, and her forehead puckered. ‘I can’t quite remember . . . there were some initials, I
know, but—’
‘RSHA?’ suggested Barcelona, into the cold silence that had fallen upon us.
‘Ah, yes! RSHA! That was it!’ Frau Dreyer clapped her hands together and looked at Barcelona. ‘Do you know it, Herr Feldwebel?’
Barcelona looked round at the rest of us for help, but we turned away and left him to it.
‘Yes, well – it’s a – well, it’s a – a big department in Berlin.’
‘What do they do there?’
‘They – ah—’ Barcelona scratched desperately in his hair. Well, it’s a sort of cross between a – a registry office and an employment bureau.’
‘I lie it!’ approved Porta, boisterously. ‘I like it, I like it! But you left out the most interesting bit.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Frau Dreyer, innocently.
‘Well, now, I’ll tell you. The RS—’
‘For God’s sake!’ said the Old Man. ‘Hold your tongue!’
‘I wonder if they wish to offer me employment?’ Frau Dreyer sighed and kicked off one of her shoes. ‘I fear I’m rather useless. I suffer from my feet, you know . . . I should have gone to the chiropodist this morning, but of course I had to miss the appointment because of coming here to see Herr Bielert.’
We nodded, solemn and awkward and wishing she could be spirited away, struck dead, turned to stone, anything to save us this embarrassment. She leaned back in her chair and began talking, rambling on in that way old people have, more to herself than to us.
‘I was out when they came for me. I’d gone to settle up with Herr Berg in the Gänsemarkt. Once a month I go. I was early, of course – 1 always am. I like to sit down in the station for a bit and watch the people go by. And then at this time of year they have such a splendid show of flowers to look at. I know Herr Gelbenschneid, the station master. I know him very well. He has green fingers, his roses are some of the best I’ve ever seen. I wish I could grow them like that, but there you are, if you don’t have the touch there’s nothing you can do about it.’
She shook her head, resigned, and Tiny shook his with her in sympathy.
‘Well, now, I knew as soon as I got to the top of my road that something had happened. I saw the car, you see. A big grey one, and I knew it belonged to the SS because I’d seen them before. At first I thought they’d come to see my neighbour. Frau Becker. She has a son in the SS. He’s an Untersturmführer in the “Reich” division. She’s very proud of him, naturally. Before he was made an officer he was in another regiment . . . what was it? SS Westland, I think. My youngest son was in the SS, you know. I didn’t want him to be, but he would have his own way. Attracted by the uniform, I shouldn’t wonder. Young boys are so easily swayed by these things . . . Anyway, he’s dead now. They sent me his Iron Cross. I remember he was very angry with me when I told him his father wouldn’t have been at all pleased at him going into the SS. You ought to wait, I said to him. Wait till you’re called up, like your brothers . . . Three brothers, he had. Two of them went into an infantry regiment, and the oldest went into the Pioneer Corps. He’s dead now, as well. The other two were reported missing. They might still be alive, I don’t know, I try not to think about it too much . . . But the youngest boy, he was always one to have his own way. When I told him to wait for the call-up and not go throwing his life away, Mother, he said to me, Mother I should by rights report you for spreading defeatist talk, but just for this once I’ll pretend not to have heard you. Never again, mind you. Next time I shall report you whether you’re my mother or not . . . Oh, dear, he was so angry with me . . . didn’t even want to kiss me goodbye when he went . . . and now he’s dead, like all the rest of them, and I’ve nothing left save his Iron Cross. I keep it in the drawer along with all their baby clothes. Their little vests and their little knitted shoes . . .’