by Sven Hassel
‘Of course, you’re quite right,’ agreed Beckmann, turning back to watch the second show of the evening. ‘No country can survive without its legal system.’
Lt. Ohlsen climbed slowly and steadily up the ladder. The assistants positioned him. His mind was a blank. Almost a blank . . . He remembered that in the seconds before dying a man’s whole life is supposed to pass before his eyes, and he wondered ahnost fretfully why his own life was not even now unfolding before him, spreading out its memories for his last minute contemplation.
He began consciously to force his mind back into the past, back into his own previous private memories, his own personal history, but before any very vivid pictures could come to him the axe crashed down and his life was over.
18 You’re lucky with women, my friend . . .
† Dear friends we’re fine today, but tomorrow we die . . .
Down in the depths of Porta’s stomach, fourteen pints of beer, nine vodkas and seven absinthes were fighting for possession, while Porta himself staggered across the room towards the piano. He walked bow legged because he was too drunk to control his muscles. He rolled pom side to side, belching and clutching at tables and chairs to support himself. Now and again, during his passage across the room, he swept bottles and glasses to the floor. Three times he himself fell to the floor and had to be picked up again.
At last he reached fas goal, but the effort had proved too much for the disputatious contents of his stomach. Sprawling across the piano, Porta opened his mouth and let everything pour out.
The pianist fell backwards off his stool.
‘Filthy sodding shit!’ he cried. ‘Look what you’ve done to my flaming piano!
By way of reply, Porta merely shot out an involuntary hand and swept a full glass of beer over the keyboard. He rolled round to the front of the piano and collapsed heavily on to the stool. With a frown of concentration on his face and his fingers large as pork sausages, heavy as lead weights, uncertain of their direction as straws in a gale, he began drunkenly to play the semblance of a well-known tune.
Bernard the Boozer jumped upon a table and thumped at the ceiling with two bottles of champagne. The room rang with the sound of drunken voices in something roughly approaching unison:
‘Vor der Kaserne, vor dem grossen Tor,
stand eine Latent und steht sie noch davor
so woll’n wir uns da wiedersehn
bei der Laterne woll’n wir stehn
wie einst, Lili Marleen.’
Only Tiny did not join in. He had a girl on his knee and was steadily undressing her, with the same careless determination with which one might pluck a chicken. The girl was alternately kicking and screaming, not sure whether to enjoy herself or to be outraged.
The pianist, unable any longer to stand the sight of his piano covered in beer and vomit, made a determined effort to oust Porta from the stool. Porta stopped playing, wound his arms lovingly about the man’s neck and hung on. Seconds later, the unfortunate pianist found himself flying headfirst across the room in the direction of the kitchen. He fetched up against the wall, at the feet of Heide and an almost comatose Barcelona.
At the same time as these festivities were taking place, a procession of people trod solemnly along a passage in the prison of Fuhlsbüttel. There were six SD soldiers, a priest, a doctor, several court officials and an old lady. They walked haltingly, almost reluctantly, towards a green baize door at the end of the passage. It seemed that they were anxious to postpone the moment when they would have to turn the handle and enter. But the moment inevitably came, and the procession moved slowly through the door and into the room beyond.
Quarter of an hour later, the door re-opened and the procession re-appeared. They were walking faster now. Six SD soldiers, the priest, the doctor and the several court officials, Only the old lady was no longer with them.
CHAPTER NINE
A Birthday Party
THE noise that poured out from the ‘Three Hares’ on the Davidstrasse could be heard in hideous clarity several streets away, even as far as the infirmary on Bernhard Nocht Strasse, where envious patients tossed and turned and cursed. it was the noise of sheer, exhilarating, incapable drunkenness and it bellied forth into the night in a continuous crescendo of sound.
The owner of the ‘Three Hares’, popularly known as Bernard the Boozer, was celebrating his birthday in a private room at the back of the bistrot. Only the most favoured of the establishment’s regulars had been allowed in.
Tiny was one of the first to arrive, early in the afternoon. He had found the Boozer enthroned on a small step ladder, directing the operations for the evening’s entertainment. Paper garlands and Chinese lanterns were being strung across the room, crates of beer and champagne stacked in the corners.
‘Someone told me it was your birthday,’ began Tiny.
Bernard nodded.
‘Someone was right.’
‘O.K.,’ said Tiny. ‘In that case I’d like to wish you many happy returns. Just wanted to get my facts right first’
‘Yeah?’
Bernard looked at him and smiled knowingly, then swung round on his ladder and shouted at a youth who was staggering beneath a crate of beer.
‘Not out there, you fool! Over there in the corner!’
Tiny’s eye hungrily followed the crate on its journey across the room, then switched back casually to the Boozer.
‘You – ah – having a bit of a do, are you?’
‘That’s it.’ Bernard blew his nose between his fingers, directly over a large pan of meat. He looked down at it, indifferently. ‘It’s all right, it’s only a stew, it can do with a bit more seasoning. In any case, everything tastes pretty much the same once it gets into that lot . . . One of the girls emptied the coffee grounds into it last week – nobody said a thing. All mixes in together, you can’t taste the difference.’
‘No,’ said Tiny. ‘I guess not.’ He gazed in wonderment at the rows of bottles ranged behind the bar. ‘Who’s going to get through all that lot, then?’
Bernard looked at him a moment, then turned and spat through the open window.
‘My mates,’ he said, simply.
Tiny grunted, not sure whether to lay immediate and automatic claim to being amongst the Boozer’s most intimate circle of acquaintances or whether to pursue some other tactic.
‘We’re going away again soon,’ he ventured, wiping the back of his hand across his panting mouth.
‘Yeah. That’s the way it goes.’
The Boozer nodded his head without sympathy. Tiny persevered.
‘We’re being sent back to the front. The battalion’s almost up to full strength again. We’ve got a whole lot of new tanks and all . . . only keep that under your hat, it’s supposed to be top secret. It’s all right telling a pal like you, I can trust a pal like you to keep his trap shut, but don’t go gabbing it around, like.’
‘Shouldn’t dream of it,’ said Bernard. ‘Don’t know anyone who’s interested.’
He pulled himself upright, stepped on to the top rung of the ladder and casually attached a paper chain to the portion of the ceiling immediately above his head. The ladder remained firm, but the Boozer wobbled perilously. He had been drinking beer since long before breakfast.
‘Watch it,’ said Tiny, stretching out an enormous calloused hand. ‘Don’t want to go breaking your neck on your birthday, do you?’ He settled Bernard back on his perch and gave him an ingratiating smile. ‘How many years does this make, then?’
‘Forty-two . . . and you can get a couple of bottles of beer over here and drink my health if you like.’
Tiny’s arm instantly stretched out to the nearest row of bottles and his vast hand closed over two of them. He passed one over to the Boozer and raised the other to his mouth, closing his teeth over the cap and starting to prise it off.
‘Hang on a minute,’ said Bernard. He held out a hand and looked Tiny squarely in the eye. ‘Where’s my present? You can’t come here drinking my booze a
nd saying happy birthday without bringing me a present’
Tiny lowered the bottle.
‘You’re quite right,’ he agreed, cordially. ‘Got it right here with me, as a matter of fact. Good thing you mentioned it, I got a memory like a sieve.’
He sunk a hand into the depths of a trouser pocket and emerged with a minute packet done up in crude pink paper. He held it out to Bernard, who examined it with interest.
‘What is it?’
‘You’ll never guess,’ said Tiny, wrenching open his bottle. ‘Not in a million years . . . It’s just what you’ve always wanted.’
Bernard tore open the paper to disclose a cheap bottle opener. He hurled it across the room with an oath.
‘That’s the tenth bloody bottle opener I’ve received today! Don’t you load of imbeciles have any imagination?’
‘It’s the thought that counts,’ said Tiny. He tipped back bis head and poured half the bottle of beer straight down his throat. ‘Didn’t no one ever tell you that?’
‘Sod the thought!’ growled Bernard. ‘Who wants five hundred bleeding bottle openers?’
‘Ah, well,’ said Tiny, wisely. ‘It’s always the same on birthdays, ain’t it? You don’t never get what you really want.’
Tiny stayed on after drinking Bernard’s health. He stayed on to help with the stage managing and to drink his host’s health a few more times in a goodly variety of beer and spirits. And when he had done all that, the first of the guests began to arrive and he stayed to look after them and make them welcome. And then the guests drank Bernard’s health, and Tiny joined in, and then more people came and more toasts were drunk, and even before the celebration had officially begun Tiny had his head out of the window and his fingers down his throat, making way for the next round of drinks.
Porta arrived mid-way through the evening. It was evident that he had stopped somewhere en route. He forged through the crowd and hit Bernard lustily on the back.
‘Many happy returns! Many many happy returns! Many many – did you get my present, by the way?’
Bernard blinked, at once suspicious.
‘What present would that be?’
‘Well, it was a bottle opener in the shape of a woman – Tiny was going to bring it—’
‘Yeah, I received that piece of crap,’ said Bernard, contemptuously.
‘That’s O.K., then. It was from Tiny and me both. Joint present. We chose it together. Just what old Bernie the Boozer could do with, we said. Save his teeth. Save his false teeth. We thought you’d go for that. We thought you’d—’
‘Ah, give your arse a chance!’ snarled his host, pushing him to one side.
At some stage in the evening, before we became paralytic, we sat down to dinner. There was much pushing and jostling and general vituperation, one or two fights broke out and one or two chairs were broken, but finally everyone was seated more or less to his satisfaction. Bernard called on the two serving girls, who were dressed – overdressed, according to some people present in black briefs and tiny aprons the size of postage stamps.
‘Hey, Helga!’ Porta called out to one of them as she came towards him with a plate. ‘Tiny tells me you gone and shave yourself like a French tart! That right? Can I have a feel?’
Helga slammed a plate of cabbage in front of him and stalked away without a word, her buttocks moving haughtily from side to side in their tight black pants. Porta whinnied like a horse and slapped a fist straight into his dish of cabbage.
At the end of the meal we fêted Bernard with a birthday boozing song. It had nothing whatever to do with birthdays, being almost exclusively preoccupied with sexual contortions and the perversion of a language, but Bernard accepted it as a fitting tribute to a man celebrating his 42nd year on earth.
We drank so much there was not one amongst us who had not yet vomited. With an inebriated sense of our own powers, we snatched up our host, tossed him into the air and caught him as he came down. The third time we all collapsed heavily to the floor, with Bernard buried beneath us. Porta staggered on to the table and stamped for silence. Heide supported him by banging two bottles together. The bottles promptly broke and a shower of glass rained down upon the group on the floor.
‘Shut your bleeding cakeholes!’ shouted Heide. ‘Joseph Porta wants to speak!’
At last we sorted ourselves out again and a sort of silence fell upon us, broken only by belches and the breaking of wind, by the sound of a man retching or by the pouring of beer.
‘Bernard the Boozer,’ began Porta, in stern, serious tones, ‘Bernie the Boozer, old pal Bernie, you’re forty-two today and we all know you’re the biggest shit that ever walked this flaming earth, but we love you for it all the same!’ Porta threw out his arms in an expansive gesture and almost fell off the table. ‘We’re all shits together!’ he cried, in tones of ringing exultation. ‘That’s why we’re here tonight, drinking the health of the biggest shit of the lot! And now we’ll have another song . . . one, two, three!’
He beat time with his feet on the table. One foot he raised too high and brought down too hard. It missed the table altogether and crashed down in to Heide’s lap. They disappeared together in a cursing tangle over the side.
At the far end of the table, Tiny had taken possession of Helga and was tugging manically at her black pants. Helga was kicking and biting for all she was worth. One or two people were placing bets on the probable winner.
Heide stayed under the table, leaning drunkenly against someone’s legs and talking to himself. He talked about war and being a soldier. It was all very tedious and it was not surprising that he soon fell into a stupor.
Barcelona, finding himself next to Bernard the Boozer, began compulsively to tell him about Spain. Barcelona always told anyone who would listen, or at least keep a decent silence, about his experiences in Spain. He demonstrated bull fighting and a battle with tanks somewhere near Alicante, and the two activities became somehow inextricably merged until Barcelona was charging up and down the room with his head lowered in imitation of a bull and an imaginary sub machine gun firing straight into the floor.
‘What the hell’s that meant to be?’ demanded Porta, crawling out from under the table and blinking as Barcelona flashed past.
Barcelona screeched to a halt, regarded Porta with drunken dignity and sat down.
‘It was at Alicante I scored one of my greatest military successes,’ he said, very coldly.
He picked up a spare glass of beer and poured it down his chest, then wiped his mouth with an air of apparent satisfaction.
‘Sod your successes,’ said Porta. ‘What about that Spanish whore you screwed? Tell us about her.’
Barcelona hiccuped so violently in remembrance that had the Old Man not kept a firm grip on his collar he would have fallen to the floor.
‘Drunk as a lord,’ said Porta, in disgust.
Barcelona leaned towards him, with the Old Man still hanging on to the back of his neck.
‘Obergefreiter Joseph Porta,’ he said, slurring everything into a single word of elephantine proportions, ‘for the one hundred and twentieth time I’m warning you: address me correctly when you speak to me. I am a Feldwebel, the backbone of the German Army.’
‘Backbone, my arse!’ said Porta, scornfully. ‘An old soak like you?’
He rolled across to the bar, collapsed against it, clawed up the nearest bottle and wrenched off the top. It went off like a gun, it was champagne, and half the guests instantly dived beneath the table. Porta raised the bottle to his lips and drank in great gulps.
‘I am a lover of the Arts!’ screamed Barcelona, into the hubbub.
Porta turned back to look at him a moment.
‘Well, get you!’ he said. ‘Feldwebel, sir,’ he added, sarcastically.
‘Not only me,’ continued Barcelona, ‘but my very dear friend Bernard, as well. He also is a lover of the Arts.’ And he leaned across and planted a heavy wet kiss on the Boozer’s forehead as a mark of their great friendship. The Booz
er smiled, foolishly. As he swayed back to his original position Barcelona crashed into the Old Man and they seesawed perilously for a while on the edge of the bench. ‘Who,’ shouted Barcelona, recovering his balance, ‘who in this drunken band of cretins and sex maniacs has ever been into a museum and tasted the beauties of Art? Who,’ he went on, growing rather muddled, ‘has ever drunk at the tree of knowledge? Which of you lousy philistine bunch has ever heard of Thorvaldsen? Eh? Which of you has ever heard of him? You probably think he’s a pimp on die Reeperbahn . . . well, he isn’t.’
Barcelona wagged a finger in the air and paused to look at it. That pause was the start of his undoing. It seemed to him that in some miraculous way he was wagging a dozen fingers all at once. Which was remarkable, when he was ready to swear that he only had five on either hand. And two hands made ten, and that was including thumbs . . . He watched for a while in fascination. He began speaking hypnotically of artists and heroes, passed on to a roof-raising speech about liberty, shouted angrily at us that we were all brothers and that he loved us, and ended up in the inevitable impasse of general obscenity and abuse, without ever realizing how he had arrived there.
He broke off in the midst of a string of curses and stared in amazement as the world rose up before his eyes and began slowly to close in upon him. He blinked and shook his head, and the world receded.
Barcelona was moved to thump vigorously on his chest, indicating his row of multi-coloured ribbons and decorations and declaring in passionate tones that none of them meant a damn thing to him and that he would be only too glad to get rid of them. He offered them all round as free gifts, attempted to claw them off his tunic and scatter them amongst us, but the effort was too much. He fell forward, headfirst on to the table, and lay with his head in a pool of beer singing a somewhat curious song about bird droppings.