by Robert Moss
Johnny came to live with hunger, a dull ache that never went away.
But he did not yet know real hunger. He saw it in the street the day the peace marchers came to the docks. He was lounging near the gates with Klaus when he heard a low buzzing in the distance, more purposeful than angry, like a swarm of borer bees at a crack in the timbers of a house.
The first civilians to appear in the street were women, haggard and shapeless, the loose skin of their faces hanging off the bones, some clutching their suckling infants. Men too old to be called up shuffled along behind them. Some of these granddaddies’ faces, grey and set as if they had been rough-etched into stone, terrified Johnny. A red flag trailed from a pole, lifeless as the men’s faces. There were a few younger fellows, Johnny noticed, keeping well to the back, one in a sailor’s uniform, but hatless—perhaps a deserter. They started singing the Internationale.
“Give us bread!” the women croaked.
Johnny went closer to get a better look at the crowd, and one of the women shoved her baby in front of his nose. He saw the unnatural, distended belly, the puny limbs, limp and pale as cold macaroni.
“Give us bread,” the mother implored.
“Down with the Kaiser!” men’s voices chimed in. “Stop the war!”
The sentries formed a line bristling with bayonets.
“I’ve got an idea,” Johnny said to Klaus. “Quick! Before the officers come!”
Klaus grumbled but trotted along at his heels. As he ran, Johnny scribbled on a card.
Klaus clutched at his arm when he realized they were headed for the storeroom where the officers’ provisions were kept.
“We can’t go in there,” he objected. Indeed, there were armed guards posted outside. At Kiel, in the third year of the war, food was more valuable than artillery shells.
But when Johnny announced “Orders” to the guards, they let him through. One even winked at him. They had been on the Thüringen together and had met once or twice in the shipyard latrines, where some of the sailors held secret meetings with socialist activists who slipped into the base from the outside.
A civilian clerk was inside, checking his inventory. He looked like a thoughtful hamster. Johnny came smartly to attention and presented the card. On the front, embossed in gothic lettering, were the words
ERICH VON ARNIM
Oberleutnant zur See
The clerk frowned over the scrawl on the back.
“Two smoked hams?” he sniffed. “Six tins of pate?” He inspected Johnny over the rims of his spectacles. “This is highly irregular. Why didn’t your lieutenant fill out the necessary forms?”
“His apologies, sir. Oberleutnant von Arnim has a pressing social engagement.”
The clerk squinted more closely at Johnny. “I remember you. You fetched him a case of champagne only a few days ago. Also without the proper requisition order. Perhaps your Oberleutnant should be reminded that this is a war station, not a catering establishment.”
“I believe—” Johnny lowered his voice “—that a royal personage is involved.”
This phrase had an immediate effect. The clerk rapped out orders to his assistant, who rushed up and down the aisles with a trolley.
“I can let you have only two bottles of champagne.” The clerk jabbed his finger against the last items on the list. “And the schnapps you must order from the mess.”
“Very good, sir.”
“Naturally, Oberleutnant von Arnim will be personally liable for the expense.”
“Naturally, sir. Thank you very much, sir.”
As they pushed the trolley back towards the gates, Klaus whispered, “Have you gone out of your mind? Von Arnim will have your guts for garters. And how did you get his card?”
“He had a spare one on his desk. I thought it might come in handy.”
“You’ll get both of us court-martialled,” Klaus muttered unhappily.
At the main gate things had come to a standstill. The crowd was singing revolutionary songs but had no forward momentum. A young lieutenant had taken charge of the guard. He had a frank, open face and ginger hair. Johnny recognized him. His name was Knorr, and he was assigned to their flagship, the Baden. His men said he was not a bad sort. Knorr’s sailors looked unhappy, hoisting their bayonets against women and children.
“What the devil do you want?” Lieutenant Knorr snapped at the two men with the trolley of provisions.
“Oberleutnant von Arnim’s compliments, sir. These are for the people.”
“For them?” Knorr looked at the crowd with misgivings. It had swelled in Johnny’s absence. Some of the women were drumming on empty cooking pots.
“Yes, sir. Sort of a goodwill gesture, sir.”
“A bayonet charge would be more like Erich von Arnim’s idea of a goodwill gesture,” Knorr remarked.
Johnny’s eyes remained level with the ribbon of the Pour le Write, Germany’s highest military decoration, on the lieutenant’s tunic.
“Very well.” Knorr opened his cigarette case. There was a faint smile of understanding at the corners of his mouth as he added, “Get on with it, then.”
Johnny advanced into a warm tide of human flesh. The smell of the crowd as it washed over him was sweet and stale. It reminded him of the odour of a dead mouse behind the wainscot of his bedroom on the Valentinskamp, multi-plied twentyfold. The sentries goggled and grumbled when they saw the hams, the cheese, the tins of sardines and foie gras — things that never graced their common tables. A girl threw her arms around Johnny’s neck. Hands plucked at his bonnet, his scarf. But when the supplies ran out, an angry, hollow roar rose from the body of the crowd.
It’s the voice of Germany, he thought.
Erich von Arnim assembled the crew of the Thüringen on deck to witness a public flogging. He stood off to one side, tapping the palm of his left hand with his riding crop in rhythm with the blows of the cat-o’-nine-tails. Of course, it was a notable breach of decorum for a naval officer to go about with a riding crop, but the captain of the Thüringen, impressed by von Arnim’s aristocratic connections, interfered with him as little as possible.
When Johnny blacked out, they sloshed salt water over him until he revived. Von Arnim did not call off the flogging until his back had been skinned as neatly as a rabbit’s.
“Some of us are fixing to get even,” a sailor whispered through the barred porthole of the ship’s brig that night.
Johnny, lying belly down, could only grunt.
“It won’t be long now. They say Lenin’s taken power in Russia.”
Despite the pain, Johnny pushed himself up from the bench with the palms of his hands and propped himself against the door.
“Lenin?” he croaked. “Is it true?”
“It’s soldiers and sailors who put him in. He’s going to stop the war. Liebknecht says we can do the same here.”
There was a heavy footfall on deck, and the sailor scuttled away.
In the gloom of his confinement Johnny felt as if a candle had just been lit. There had been wild rumours from Russia early that year, when Kerensky had taken over. But Kerensky, like Ebert and his gang in Germany, was a war socialist, ready to fight the battles of the ruling class for them. Lenin! Now that was different. Johnny had read some of his articles in underground papers put out by Liebknecht’s followers that passed from hand to hand inside the shipyards. The Russian looked like a schoolmaster, with his pasty face and his little pointed beard. But he had a mind like a razor. He dissected the crisis of civilization that was killing and starving millions for the sake of profiteers like Rausch and predators like von Arnim. He offered cures for the plagues that were ravaging Johnny’s generation: war, hunger and spiritual exhaustion. Above all, he offered hope. In Russia, fighting against impossible odds, he had just proved his own dictum: “There are absolutely no impossible situations.”
Johnny thought, We have found our compass.
The German revolution came almost a year after Lenin’s, and Johnny was in its fro
nt ranks.
He made no more quixotic gestures. To all appearances he had learned his lesson and become a dutiful German sailor, suitably deferential to his superiors. But in secret he joined the Spartakus Bund, named for the hero of the celebrated slave revolt against the Roman republic, and plotted mutiny with handpicked socialists from other ships. Soon the conspirators had organized cells on every warship in the harbour.
A champagne party gave them their signal.
Germany was defeated, everyone knew that. There was talk that Kaiser Wilhelm had abdicated and run away to Holland. But that night, Admiral Hipper and his officers sat up in their wardrooms, clinking champagne flutes and toasting the Death Ride of the Fleet.
“What did they call it?” Johnny asked the orderly who brought word to the men crowded below on the Thüringen.
“The Death Ride of the Fleet,” he repeated. “They say the British will seize all our ships when the surrender is signed. They want to take on the British and go down with all guns blazing, if that’s what it comes to. For the honour of the navy.”
“Honour!” Johnny echoed the word with contempt. “Their honour. Not ours. Not one ship leaves harbour. Right?” He stared around the circle of worried, intent faces. “Klaus, you go to the Baden. Make sure the men are with us.” He gave similar instructions to the others. They accepted his orders without question, without resentment. He was the youngest among them, yet he had already acquired a natural authority that had nothing to with age or epaulettes.
In the morning the sailors doused the furnaces and downed anchors. On the flagship Baden, mutineers barricaded themselves in the forward hatches and sang the Internationale. On the Thüringen, Johnny and a dozen others broke into the armoury and passed out rifles.
“Back to your posts,” a voice rang out. The voice was confident and superior, the eternal voice of command.
Johnny turned and saw Lieutenant von Arnim in full dress uniform with his monocle and his riding crop. He had to admire the man’s coolness. The sailors hesitated.
“You! Lentz! Stand to attention!”
Even Johnny, drilled for months to obey that voice without hesitation, started instinctively to respond. But instead, he levelled his carbine.
“Oberleutnant, you are under arrest. The ship is in the hands of the revolutionary committee.”
Von Arnim laughed. In the face of a mutiny, he seemed to be utterly without fear.
“You goddamned little Red,” he said softly. “I knew I should have had you shot.”
He flicked the riding crop and drove a diagonal welt across Johnny’s cheek. The men murmured but started to back off. Erich von Arnim, with his total self-confidence and his riding crop, personified the power that had regimented their lives better than a company of marines with fixed bayonets.
Johnny knew the illusion had to be shattered, or the revolt on the Thüringen would end at that moment. If only his hands would stop shaking...He tried to recall the pain of his flogging, the haunted faces of the grey women with their empty cooking pots.
He held the carbine in front of him, steadying the barrel with his left hand. When he pulled the trigger, the butt slammed back into his stomach.
Von Arnim pressed his hand to his chest between the collar bones, where a scarlet patch, vivid against his dress white, flowered like a new decoration. His eyeglass dropped from his face and rolled on its edge across the deck. He flailed at the air with his riding crop, but his body crumpled under him.
“Come on!” Klaus Behring rallied the men. “We’re in this together! We’re going to Hamburg!”
“And then to Berlin!” someone else bellowed.
All along the harbourfront women were waiting to garland them with red sashes and red cockades. One of them tied a paper flower into the ribbon of Johnny’s hat. The sailors reversed their hatbands and slung their rifles butt upwards. What better symbol that the world was turning upside down?
They commandeered every car and truck they saw, piling on to the running boards, the hoods, even the roofs.
“To Hamburg!” Klaus yelled in Johnny’s ear.
Johnny nodded his agreement.
There’s no turning back now, he told himself. We win or we die.
4
The rebel sailors called themselves the Volksmarine, the People’s Navy, and the world belonged to them in those autumn days of 1918. Johnny went home to Hamburg with them. An elderly general at the head of a column of reservists and policemen marched out, revolver in hand, to order them back to their ships. Klaus Behring, warming to his new role, kicked the revolver out of the general’s hand, and the Volksmarine paraded through the port city in triumph. Girls fought for the privilege of bedding a sailor with a red cockade in his hat, and Johnny was not ashamed to take advantage of their liberated spirits. The sailors decked their girls out in silks and furs plundered from the fashionable stores. Johnny was nervous about this orgy of looting. Surely this was not the way to win the people; and the time would come when the middle class, however lethargic and cowardly, would fight for its property. Still, they had announced the formation of a Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council; perhaps that would impose revolutionary discipline.
For all his scruples, he was not above taking a hamper of “liberated” delicacies with him when he went back to the Valentinskamp to visit his family. From the intermittent letters from his father that had reached him at Kiel, he gathered that the family was living close to the edge, scraping by on the pickings of a lowly clerical job Herr Lentz had found at the cement factory at Altona.
Johnny was shocked to see how they were living. They had all lost weight, even Bertha. The music room and his old bedroom had both been given over to lodgers. The living room was dominated by an ancient Singer sewing machine, which his mother and Bertha took turns operating, stitching party dresses for neighbours who could still afford to pay.
Heidi Lentz scowled at her son’s muddied uniform and the sailor’s hat with the band reversed, and averted her face when he tried to kiss her cheek. Bertha gave him the briefest squeeze.
“They don’t approve,” his father whispered when they were alone together in the kitchen. It smelled of lard and boiled cabbage. Herr Lentz’s face was the colour of old ivory, with two bright, unnatural points of colour in the cheeks. He was sweating, despite the chill in the room. Each breath seemed to cause him an intolerable effort.
“Father, you’re not well. You must go to a doctor. I have some money—”
“No time for all that,” Herr Lentz barked. “I need your advice. You’ve seen something of what’s going on. Will it last?”
“I can’t say.”
“It’s too soon, Johnny. You and your sailors — what have you been up against so far? A few tired reservists. Wait till the frontline troops get home and the General Staff takes over. The Social Democrats won’t shed any tears for you. They’ll lead the slaughter. They’re good Germans, after all. Good Germans believe in order.”
“We’ve got Russia behind us.”
“Russia!” Gottfried Lentz snorted. “Lenin is on top because the German General Staff put him there. He won’t last much longer than your friend Liebknecht, not with the British and the White generals against him. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“You’re wrong, father.” Johnny talked about the war that had chased three dynasties from their thrones and turned Europe into a gigantic graveyard. The old order was smashed beyond repair. Old conventions — even the old religions — were dying. History belonged to those with the courage to seize the reins, as the Bolsheviks had done in Russia.
“Well, it’s no good arguing with a believer. I see that’s what you’ve become.”
“Is it wrong to have a cause?”
“Only if it becomes an ersatz religion. That’s what Proudhon thought was wrong with Marx, that he wanted to found a new religion, a religion of the state.”
“You said you wanted my advice.”
“Oh, yes. Our local Lenins — the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Cou
ncil, they call themselves — summoned me to see them. I suppose somebody must have it in for me. I found a lot of drunks carousing in a grand salon. They even had a fire going in the middle of the floor. They scared me more than General Ludendorff.”
“What did they want?”
“They wanted me to take charge of popular education. I gather I might be paid if they stay in for more than a week. Should I do it?”
Johnny suddenly felt cold. He could gamble with his own life, but not with his father’s.
“Father, it’s not for me to say—” he began lamely.
“I mean, do you think I might do any good?”
“You might be a restraining influence,” Johnny admitted, thinking of the looters running amok in the stores. “They need educated men.”
“Then I’ll do it!” Herr Lentz announced with a grin. “That will give old Rausch something to worry about. Let’s have a beer to celebrate!”
“What about Mother?”
For an instant, his father’s head seemed to withdraw between his shoulders. Then he bounced back.
“I am the master of this house,” he announced defiantly. To prove his point, he called to his wife, “Heidi! Bring us two beers!”
Johnny watched in some trepidation as his mother walked heavily into the kitchen. Her expression was thunderous, but, to Johnny’s amazement, she brought the beer.
The revolution had entered the house on the Valentinskamp.
5
In Berlin, Johnny saw the red blanket draped over the Kaiser’s balcony at the imperial Schloss, which the rebel sailors had turned into their barracks. He saw the crowds rip the epaulettes off any regular officer who dared to present himself in uniform in the streets. The girls were as welcoming as they had been in Hamburg.
But the carnival did not last long. Soon the streets rang under the boots of endless columns of stern-faced men in steel helmets and field grey, troops coming home from the front. When the crowds sang “Death to hangmen, kings and tyrants!” these soldiers did not join in.