by Steve Weiner
“Teufel,” Nicholas said. “Devil. It’s hot.”
Pipes leaned against glasses with residues of beer. Playing cards, shaving brushes, and razors stood on night tables. An aroma of soldiers’ clean cotton mixed with varnish. Recruits in purple pajamas smoked on windowsills.
Rolevinck, a Sudetenlander, veteran of the East Africa schutz-truppen, turned.
“Shits like you should be practice targets,” he said.
“Why?” Nicholas said.
“You’re skinny.”
“I get around.”
“How many pregnant?” Rolevinck said.
“None that I know of.”
Outside, pear blossoms fell. On Princes’ Hill over the Olomouc orchards stood a cathedral: St. Wenceslas. A Czech unwrapped cheese.
“Hey, nmec,” he said.
“Me?”
“It means ‘German.’”
“That’s me.”
“It also means ‘dumb person.’”
“That’s me, too.”
“Want some cheese?”
“Is that what stinks?”
“Olomoucke syrecky. It’s a specialty. Want some?”
“Shit, no.”
Recruits from Tyrol sang.
The most beautiful in the world
Is my Tyrol-land
Nicholas made shadows: boy, cat, goose. Germans from the Mark sang.
Mark heath
Mark sand
Are the Marker’s joy
Are his homeland
Nicholas turned to a blond German.
“You’re from the North, aren’t you?”
“Altona.”
“Ick bün boorn in Hamboorg!” Nicholas said.
Nicholas put his arm around the Altona recruit. They sang.
On the heath blooms a little flower
And she is named Erika,
Hot from a hundred thousand kissable little bees
That swarm around Erika
Outside, soldiers disassembled mortars. Soldiers shot canvas bags on poles carried by a private in a ditch. A Slav prisoner squatted on his heels. Skies deepened.
A barracks boy came in.
“Any hot water in the showers?” Nicholas said.
“Do you want hot water?”
“Yes.”
“I could let you have some.”
“I don’t have any cigarettes for you,” Nicholas said.
“That’s all right. I don’t smoke.”
The barracks boy left and heated water. Nicholas showered. He came out and put on purple pajamas. He sat on the windowsill. A Jew pulled a wagon of grenades, machine guns. The Jew wiped his face.
“Liever krepieren als solche Strapazen,” he said. “Better die like an animal than work like this.”
Nicholas leaned out.
“Complain, complain!”
“Next moment you’ll be dead,” the Jew said.
“Not me. You!”
Sergeant Spahn came in.
“Barracks cleaning!”
Nicholas and Rolevinck fell on hands and knees, scrubbed the floor in their purple pajamas. Sergeant Rhinelander came in. He clapped his hands.
“Mess!”
Recruits dressed again. They crossed a field. They went into a mess hall.
Tureens of beet soup steamed. Cabbage boiled. A Slav brought coffee and bread. Czech artillery loader Bohumil ate goat with paprika.
The recruits went back to the barracks. A half moon rose over barley fields. Nicholas ate Olomouc pears. Sergeant Spahn dumped guns on night tables: Spandau, Sten, Schmeisser.
“Border trouble,” he said.
“Poles?” Nicholas said.
“Yes. Poles.”
“Ha!”
“Poles are no joke!”
“No!”
“No apathy!”
Sergeant Spahn unwrapped a Bren submachine gun. Recruits gathered around.
“Twenty-four hundred forty bullets a minute,” Sergeant Spahn said. “Round magazine fits here.”
Recruits passed it around. Sergeant Spahn unwrapped a second submachine gun.
“Also Bren,” he said, “but lighter.”
Recruits hefted it.
“Poles make good enemies,” Rolevinck said.
“Why?”
“They shoot themselves first.”
“No. They shoot their officers first!” Nicholas said. “Then they shoot themselves!”
“Ha!”
“Ha ha!”
Sergeant Spahn instructed in loading. He left. Nicholas wrote a letter and nailed it to the barracks wall.
Anybody if you care
I am a recruit in a German-speaking regiment in the Czech army. Tomorrow or the next day or the day after we take a piece of Poland. I say, who wants it? I was in the merchant marine. Then I was a salesman. Everybody I worked for—especially Julius Bernai—was greedy and stupid.
N. Bremml
In the morning Nicholas went to the regimental bordello. A woman cost one krone. Regiment prostitutes—koketlas—sat on a couch. Most were Hungarian. Some were Croatian. Proverbs were stenciled behind them.
Love is a secret of two.
In her heart is a secret.
Such a moment actually existed.
Though you tried to deny it.
“A brief encounter is fatal,” the physician said. “Sweetness and regret last a lifetime.”
In the afternoon Nicholas walked past a slaughterhouse in thistles. He went under a railroad water tower. A male prostitutes stood by a tavern.
He went in. Calling cards lined booths: blue lizards, dread-noughts. Speculators drank with “cousins.” A button here, a button there, was undone. Men in silk blouses sold lottery tickets. Germans drank Pilzner. Czechs drank rakjaschnapps.
A Czech soldier sang.
The hussar has a horse for thirty dollars
And I have my Hanicka for free
And I have my Hanicka for free
Ach, Hanna, little Hanna, you are so small
And I like you better
Than the hussar likes his horse
A bearded married man sat by Nicholas.
“You drink wine or schnapps?”
“Schnapps …”
The man ordered schnapps.
“Cigarette?”
“Danke.”
The man bought a pack. It was three krone for fifty Bosnian cigarettes.
“German?”
“From Hamburg.”
“Hamburg? You’re far from home.”
“I enlisted in Prague.”
The bearded married man clapped Nicholas’s shoulder.
“One day you’ll be Praporcik. The guy who carries the flag!”
“Me?”
“Why not?”
“I couldn’t handle it.”
“Kapitan! Major! Yes! General!”
Nicholas laughed.
“Dwatsch,” he said. “That’s senseless. I couldn’t be an officer.”
“Why not?”
“No good in the head.”
The man touched Nicholas’s chest.
“But good here?”
“Probably.”
They drank.
“But, you see,” Nicholas said. “I could not live up to my ideals.”
The man edged closer.
“Every young man is afraid,” he said.
“Really?”
“A woman inspires unimaginable feelings. One pretends to be in love. In fact, one is terrified. Strange images are jolted loose. Everything is possible.”
“Everything?”
The man put his arm around Nicholas.
“Everything, my friend.”
“Dat is böös, nich?” Nicholas said. “That’s evil, no?”
“How so?”
“A mistake like that lasts forever.”
“An impulse is not a mistake.”
“No? …”
“Misery with women. Get rid of it!”
They left together.
�
��Klyk cu, muoj mily butjíku,” a male prostitute said, in Old Moravian. “Good luck, my dear comrade.”
Before dawn, recruits packed prunes and plums, bananas, cucumbers and sultanas. Sergeant Spahn searched knapsacks for male love tokens.
“Where are he headed?” Rolevinck said.
“Cziesyn, Poland.”
“Oh.”
“They dress you up and call you a soldier,” Nicholas said. “What a joke.”
“Be quiet, Bremml,” Sergeant Spahn said.
The platoon marched out. Sun rose over a meadow. Mules carried condensed milk, lard, bacon, and water. Company 142 manhandled a seventy-five millimeter gun. Sappers, sanitary corps, filed in front. They came to a Polish-speaking village. Nicholas and Rolevinck carried away eggs, two pigs, and a feather pillow. They double-stepped to catch up.
The Altona recruit collapsed.
“We die for idiots!”
Sergeant Spahn pointed at him.
“Unmannerly! Arrested!”
They tied him to a tree. Sergeant Spahn beat him.
“Bivouac!”
Nicholas dumped his equipment. Rolevinck collapsed in the sand. A priest farted. Strumpf ran into bushes with diarrhea. A flare sidewinded across the grass.
Field gendarmes, hands on holsters, patrolled. Sergeant Spahn carried a shotgun. Sergeant Rhinelander carried a rifle.
A firing squad lined up. A deserter was tied to a tree with a sign around his neck: In contumaciam zum Tod berurteilt. In contrition sentenced to death.
“Load!”
Five cartridges were inserted.
“Secure!”
A front line went down.
“Aim!”
Rifles moved up. Butts at shoulders, forefingers held triggers.
“Shoot!”
Nicholas cleaned his eight-millimeter Mauser. Rolevinck wiped his Austrian automatic pistol. Behind them the troop leader cut bullet heads and dipped them in excrement.
“Troop leader, sir,” Nicholas said. “There is a strange apathy.”
“Be quiet.”
“—strange hesitations—”
“Shut up.”
“Deep down, there is something wrong.”
“Get through without panic,” the troop leader said. “That’s the main thing.”
Recuits ate. Nicholas went to a mossed stone wall. He stepped on Rolevinck.
“Cretin!”
“Idiot!”
They watched the stars. Nicholas slapped his face.
“Shitty mosquitoes.”
A Polish zeppelin glided.
“Quiet,” Rolevinck said. “Make a noise, and they’ll blow their brains out.”
“Ha.”
“Ha ha.”
Lights blinked in forests in the Czech and Polish mountains. Sergeant Spahn kicked Nicholas.
“Stillgestanden!”
The platoon stood at attention.
“Equipment!”
Nicholas picked up his Mauser and a rifle. A recruit from the Mark took percussion fuses and stick grenades. Soldiers carried forty kisten of dynamite onto a forest road. Rolevinck picked up detonators and took them to a black trestle bridge. Opposite was a Polish machine gun. Sergeant Spahn put on white gloves.
“Assault tactic!”
Nicholas took the safety off his rifle.
“Get set for paradise,” Rolevinck whispered.
“Los!”
Nicholas, Rolevinck, and the platoon ran across the bridge. A Polish silhouette swallowed Nicholas’s gunsight. Nicholas pulled the trigger. The silhouette grabbed its face.
“Dzidka!”
Polish twenty-one centimeter mortars opened up. Artillery horses panicked and clattered backward. Sergeant Rhinelander, shot in the head, fired two revolvers. Polish 30.5-centimeter howitzers opened up. Nicholas’s head shot back.
“Mich hat’s!” he screamed “I’m hit!”
He fell into the ravine. His boots filled with blood.
“Ik blööd!” he yelled. “I bleed!”
He crawled down the ravine. He came to a field hospital. Cadets in visored caps, black shoes, dipped bandages in boiled water. Legs and leather straps stood in a pile. A Czech lieutenant wiped a knife.
“Come here.”
The Czech lieutenant slapped him.
“What regiment, what company, are you?”
“Ik bün verlor’n,” Nicholas said. “I’m lost!”
“I could shoot you.”
“Kompagnie 142. II Infantieregiment,” Nicholas said. “Company 142! Second Infantry Regiment!”
“Deserter?”
“Nein!”
A cadet handed the lieutenant a revolver. Nicholas backed away.
“Nee!”
A stallion stepped on an S-mine. The mine jumped up out of ferns and blew the horse’s forelegs off. Medicine, bandages, and carbolic acid twirled into the pines. The Czech lieutenant tumbled.
Nicholas groped to a grove.
Everybody dies in a ditch.
Sergeant Spahn, legs burned to knee stumps, grabbed raspberry bushes. The recruit from the Tyrol defecated in a pool of blood. There was a death shout in the forest.
Halal
Rolevinck dragged a torn yellow nightgown.
“Where are the other two from the Tyrol?” Nicholas said.
“Dead.”
“Bohumil?”
“Missing.”
“Where’s the regiment commander?” Nicholas said.
“Isn’t any.”
The road caught fire. A black corona flared out of the sun. Bullets rotated past ferns. Nicholas dragged his rifle. An old man ran by with a knife in his rectum. Two cows with bandoliers hung from evergreens.
Nicholas slumped to his knees.
“Dat Ende kümmt na,” he said. “The end comes now.”
A branch cracked.
“Where are you?” Nicholas said.
Look for me
Nicholas pulled the trigger. Branches splintered.
I am nowhere. I am everywhere.
Nicholas fell in the dust.
I was your morning and your evening.
Bleeding pink fruit opened. Blue eyes glided.
“Agatha …”
COULDN’T HOLD ON, COULDN’T LET GO
BERNAI SLEPT until noon. A soil examiner came to measure evapotranspiration of trees.
“Are these trees male or female?” Bernai asked.
“Can’t you tell?”
“No.”
Dr. Dehmel left for two weeks to Villach. Bernai danced a fandango, slapped his boots.
Ich bin König
Ich bin Königen
Ich kann und will
Ich will aber kann nicht
I am king
I am queen
I can and want
I want but can’t
Bernai telephoned for a Daimler. He dressed in lederhosen, sandals, and a feathered green cap. He went into the courtyard. Eros had been replaced by the Three Graces.
The Daimler came.
“Glory to God,” the chauffeur said.
“Glory.”
The Daimler drove to Passau on the Danube. Pilgrimage resorts were crowded. Trains, buses, river steamers were filled. Bernai sat at an outdoor café.
Men from Allgäu wore wide black hats. Men from Steiermark carried wreaths. Adolescent boys from Moosburg on the Isar wore woven vests. Mothers and boys from Goslar in the Harz Mountains wore embroidered blouses. Remnants of the Danube monarchy sunned themselves.
Bernai ordered a south Danube delicacy: radish in black skin, peeled, sliced thinly, marinated in salt and lager, served with black rye bread and Passau beer. Waiters brought cream pastries to other tables, blueberry pies, ice cream and liqueurs, melon balls and strawberries.
Bernai raised a glove.
“Waiter!”
“Direkt!”
“Coffee!”
Bernai went to the cathedral. Jewish beggars crowded the door.
“Tired …”
“Unsatisfied …”
The Madonna of Battles stood under a gold chandelier. A boys’ choir sang: et omnes perdidit … and they all died. Motets, introit, versikeln, gradualien, offertorien, responsorien—the mass—echoed.
Bernai confessed
“How have you sinned?” the priest said.
“I am in love.”
“So?”
“With a woman.”
“Your sins are insinnatio and intimum,” the priest said. “Invasive and most interior.”
“The dreadful act, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Per anum—per vaginum,” Bernai said. “What is the difference?”
“The mind.”
A procession came down the nave. Priests in red and gold copes carried the Madonna of Battles.
Alle Waffen, die wir tragen, a banner read. All the weapons we carry—
—fallen gegen die Waffe, a banner read. —fail against the weapon—
—die Liebe heisst— a banner read. —called love—
The Daimler drove Bernai on the German Romantic Road: Gaisenhausen, Vilsbiburg, Altöttung, Neumarkt-St. Veit. Yellow leaves fluttered on the heights. Bernai got out. Rain plopped. Bavarian hunters carried a stag.
“What have you killed?” Bernai said.
A hunter winked.
“Same as you.”
A boy carried a dead hare.
“What have you killed?” Bernai said.
“Same as you.”
Bernai hiked. A marriage-monger stood at a crossroads. He wore edelweiss in his hat.
“You’ve come for the wedding?” he said.
“No.”
“Yes you have.”
Horse riders came down the road. Young men held lanterns on poles. Four men carried seven-foot candles.
“Here she comes!” the marriage-monger said.
“Who?”
“Who, he says.”
Garlanded oxen pulled a cart. A blonde girl at the front rail wore a mantelet of poult de soie and myrtle on a white chemisette and a braided white jacket. A friar ran spilling white beans.