The Years of the Wolf

by Cormick, Craig;

  He turns and goes back to his cell. He sits on his bunk and presses his palms flat against the stones there, and feels a chill dampness in them. Then he wraps himself tightly in his blanket, and looks up to the thin window. He can feel the cold air coming in and winding its chill touch around them. Then he takes up his diary and writes how he had walked the walls in the rain. Braved the elements to do his duty. Even though he had not.

  Horst has developed a cold in the night and he lies on his bunk, wrapped tightly, shivering and sniffling. Every now and then he emits an enormous sneeze that echoes around the small cell like a gun being discharged. And each time he sneezes Arno mumbles, “Gesundheit.” It is the closest they have had to a conversation for some time.

  There are few men out in the corridor as most have gathered in their cells in small groups, hiding from the elements or the Sunday service, talking or playing cards, or just huddled under their blankets, trying to return to sleep through the lassitude of a wet Sunday in internment.

  Herr Kaufmann, walking back to his cell after the morning’s service is finally done, puts his head into Arno’s cell and says, “This rain is good news, yes? It should wash away the blood and guts on the beach, making it safer to swim again.”

  Arno looks up at him. The optimistic smile on his face is like an actor’s painted mask, he thinks. “Yes,” he says. But Herr Kaufmann has gone before the words are even said. Arno wonders what else the rain will wash away? It might wash all the colour from the outside world, he thinks. It will certainly wash away any blood stains left behind by Herr Eckert and Herr Peter.

  He closes his eyes and tries to picture the blueness of the ocean in his mind, but all he can conjure is a deep grey. He looks back across to Horst and watches him shiver. Then he sneezes again—an almighty shot. “Gesundheit,” Arno says. Horst says nothing.

  And Arno is tempted to ask Horst what he thinks about as he lies there alone on his bunk during the days. His wife? His children? Does he dream of flying away from the prison perhaps? Or does he think of dying there? Like the two men already dead. Then Arno suddenly says, “I believe Herr Peter died out in the compound in the middle of the night.”

  Horst slowly rolls over on his bunk and looks at him. He sniffles a little, then says, “Yes. He often left his cell in the night.” His eyes are red and weepy, and Arno sees just how ill the older man is.

  Arno sits forward on his bed. “What do you mean?”

  “Herr Peter regularly left his cell late in the night. Often not returning again until near the morning.” And Arno understands he is sharing his cell with a man that he does not really know at all.

  “Why?” asks Arno, but can see from Horst’s face that it is the wrong question to ask him. “I mean, how do you know?”

  Horst rubs his watery eyes, as if he’s too tired for spite today, and says, “Franz, his cell-mate told me.”

  Arno knows Franz Grübber as a tall thick-set man. An Austrian. And an active member of the athletics club. An unlikely cell mate for Herr Peter, whose interests in life were more classical, although Arno had always suspected he had too strong an interest in watching other men bathing down on the beach, reflected in his dreams of swimming with young boys in a large bath. He had also heard some of the men calling him “decadent”—in a deriding tone. But all he can ask Horst, again, is, “Why?”

  “Maybe he was a member of the Wolf Pack,” says Horst, then sneezes again. Another sudden shot echoing loudly around the cell. Then he ducks his head back into his blankets to signal the conversation is ended.

  Arno lies back down on his bunk and pulls his own blankets over his head. He opens his diary inside his little cave and writes that name there, Wolfsrudel, as if it is very secret and dangerous. As if it needs to be kept hidden.

  Herr Dubotzki is sitting in the dark of his small cell. The door is tightly sealed. Locked from the inside. He is staring at a blank sheet in front of him. Watching as an image starts to form. He moves the paper a little with his tweezers and lets the developer run over it. He stares carefully as an outline forms. Sees the soft grey of a face appearing. Watches the face slowly solidify. Like it is stepping out of the darkness around it. The eyes are taking shape now, and the mouth. Then the more subtle tones around the cheeks and nose. It is a face he knows well. Pandora’s face—but without the veil. He knows just what it would be worth to him to sell the photo in the prison. But he knows there would be a higher price he would have to pay. He holds the print down in the tray before him, refusing to let the face surface to the air. Holds it down as the features darken and the background fills out completely. Then the face ages to a deep grey. And finally to black. He takes the print out of the developer and drops it into a bin at his feet, filled with other darkened images. He smiles to himself as he takes a clean sheet of photographic paper. Just one more, he thinks.

  Doctor Hertz has a frock over one arm and a pair of women’s stockings in the other. “Try the dark dress,” he says.

  Fritz Fuchs, a young engineer with a thin and bony body, sighs and pulls the blue dress over his head. He is becoming bored with this. All the dress changing. The make-up. The wigs. The padded breasts. He is wondering if he still wants to be an actor. But the doctor has confidence in him. He has told him that he can shape him into a great actor. Fritz Fuchs isn’t so sure. The doctor has told him he has perfect bone structure to play a woman, and is trying to get him to stand and walk like a woman.

  They are in the small infirmary, where much of the rehearsing is done. It is private and less intimidating, the doctor has assured him. Costumes and accessories are spread out over the beds and intern Meyer stands to one side of the room, disinterestedly cleaning some jars.

  “How is this?” Fritz asks, adopting a pose. Doctor Hertz adjusts the dress, sets the wig straight and then walks around him. He takes up one of his hands and sets it on his hip. Bends the fingers out a little. Then grabs his shoulder and massages it as if it were clay, and he were reshaping it. He relaxes the muscles there and bends it to the shape he wants. Then he takes up Fritz’s other arm and holds it by the wrist, moving the hand back and forth in a soft swaying motion.

  Then he stands back, like a sculptor, admiring his work, sizing up the line and angle. He steps in close again and places a hand under Fritz Fuchs’s chin, and tilts the head back a little. Then he turns it on a slight angle. He steps away and looks at it. Frowns. Steps in closer and puts Fritz’s hands on his hips. Moves them a little. One side slightly higher than the other. Steps back. Looks again at his creation. Smiles.

  “Ja,” he says. “Es ist gut.” Then he says. “Walk for me.”

  Fritz takes several steps across the room and turns his head to look at the doctor as he goes. But the doctor is shaking his head. “Nein, nein, nein,” he says. “Women don’t walk like that. They glide.”

  Fritz Fuchs pulls a face. “My sisters never glided,” he says. “They walked like this.”

  “Acting is not about becoming the women you remember,” the doctor says. “It is about becoming the women you imagine.”

  Fritz considers that. “Here,” says the doctor. “Meyer. Show him how it is done.”

  Meyer puts down the jars he is cleaning and without saying a word he walks over to the wall and takes down a long apron. He ties it around his waist and then stands with his back to them for a moment. Then he turns around slowly. His face and posture have changed completely. His chin is tilted up and he holds his hands slightly away from his body. He looks around the room, as if sizing up its space, not looking at any of the people there—and then he walks. No, he glides. Right across the room, from one side to the other and back. Fritz Fuchs is astounded. The transformation is so consummate that he feels he is watching a woman. Meyer stops at the wall again, with his back to them, and lets his posture drop as he turns back into the doctor’s intern. He doesn’t even smile. Just walks back to the jars and begins cleaning where he lef
t off.

  Fritz Fuchs claps, soft and slowly. “Sehr gut,” he says. “Yes. It is much easier to understand when you see it before you.”

  Arno looks at his watch. 3.20pm. He listens to the rain. It has let up a little, but is still falling as incessantly as afternoon boredom. He looks over at Horst. He is dozing noisily, heaving great sighs as he breathes. Arno looks at his watch again. It is still 3.20. He has his diary in front of him. He has been staring at the empty page but cannot quite capture what to write. As if words are beyond him today. He counts the stone blocks up the wall to the roof—one to twelve. Then back down again—twelve to one. Then he looks at his watch again. 3.20. He lifts it to his ear to listen to it. Tic—tic—tic. He watches the long minute hand to see if he can observe it moving. He counts the seconds in his head 1—2—3… The count fades away somewhere in the twenties and he turns to look out the cell door. Somebody is pacing in the corridor. Walking down towards the hall, then back again. He tries not to look at his watch anymore. Tries not to count the stones in the wall again. Tries not to think of the look on Herr Eckert’s face again. 3.20. And he once more wonders which of his cell mates might be a killer—and if he is even aware of it?

  Commandant Eaton is sitting in his office with Sergeant Gore before him. The Captain has demanded that he produce a list of suspects for the two murders, and is not happy to be told by the Sergeant that he has been unable to identify any. “Even someone that we can investigate more thoroughly in order to clear their name would be progress,” the Captain says. “For if you can’t manage it, we will be forced to accede to the Military Police.” The Captain has practised this line to hide the desperation from his voice.

  Sergeant Gore stares back at him in consternation for a moment, and then has to check himself to stop a sly grin spreading across his face. He recognises a bluff when he sees one—even if not at first. The Captain will have a lot more to lose from the MPs giving them a visit than he will. Though the thought of them searching through the barracks fills him with unease. He looks at the Captain and suddenly finds that he has a common interest with him.

  “Righto,” he says. “Here’s my thinking on the matter. It was a feud that was imported into the camp—not one that was created here, like the way the Turks and Germans fight in Holsworthy for no other reason than being Turks and Germans. We’ve got Jews and Christians and competing businessmen in here, and some who have brought wealth with them and some who haven’t—and that just sets the ground for jealously and conflict.”

  “Go on,” says the Captain, all too aware that people who are brutalised tend to be those that brutalise others in turn, but not convinced that any of the men in his care could be said to have been driven to such extremes.

  “Well, to my mind there are only two things a man decides it is worth killing for—a woman or money,” says the Sergeant.

  The Captain says nothing but he is thinking that there is some logic in what the Sergeant says, even if his imagination is limited by only two incentives to murder.

  “And since there ain’t no women here, the disagreement must have been about money. If we follow the trails of the Huns’ money around the prison I reckon we’ll find our murderer.”

  The Captain considers that and watches the way the Sergeant looks up at the portrait of the King over his head. “Continue that line of investigation then, Sergeant,” Captain Eaton says. “And let me know what you find.” He is not confident that the Sergeant’s line of reasoning will identify the killer, and he wonders if that is because he does not want to believe that any of the men are capable of acting like the beastly Huns they are all too-often portrayed as. It would only prove his wife right to find one was a murderer.

  “Yes, sir,” Sergeant Gore says, and snaps a salute at his commanding officers. He then turns and leaves the office, thinking that if it were easier to find someone to blame the murder on than to find no one, then that’s what he’d have to do. The only real decision then was who he should find, because he does not want to look where his instincts tell him the murderer will actually be found.

  There is no performance that evening, being a Sunday, but all the inmates are treated to a long drumming concert on the metal roof of the cell wings, as the rain has still not let up. Chill damp air continues to creep in through their barred windows, and men don heavy coats and wrap themselves in their blankets. Horst had not risen all day, except for a quick trip to the latrine. He is still shivering and sneezing.

  All down the corridor, as internees enter or exit their cells, swinging open the barred doors, Arno can hear the same joke being repeated over and over, “Close that door, it’s freezing in here!”

  Arno plays out in his head walking around the prison yard, touching the stone walls and trying to feel the dreams stirring within. For only a madman would be out tonight in weather like this, he thinks.

  Private Cutts-Smith is in the southwest watchtower looking out into the dark rain. He curses the weather. There is a wind blowing the icy drops into the tower that catches him wherever he stands. He curses the rain. Then he curses the army. Then he curses the Huns.

  “Bastards,” he mutters. This is not much better than being on patrol in the trenches. Feet in cold water. Feeling the rot in his boots. Shivering and staring into the night until his eyes feel they have turned to ice. Just waiting for the flares to go up. Waiting for the whistles to sound. Knowing an attack is getting closer. He can recall feeling at times that the corpses out in no man’s land were creeping towards them, as the rotting and putrid stench of them drifted in, as if warning them of an enemy attack. He would lift his rifle and lean out into the darkness, wishing he could use it to part the curtains of rain. Wishing he could see the men advancing upon him. Wondering if he should fire off a flare just in case. Wondering if it would have much effect on the rain that beats down on his metal helmet like falling clods of earth after a shell burst. It would make him deaf to all noise. Blot out the advance of the Hun, sneaking up on him to slit his throat.

  He wipes the streams of water from his face and stares out into the darkness again. Shivers. Wishes he’d put on his sheepskin jerkin. Thinks for a moment he can see movement out there. The shape of a man running around the corner of the cellblock. Running across the compound towards him. Coming for him, to slit his throat. He looks around for a flare gun. Thinks, if only he could see them he would be able to pick them off before they got him. Then sniffs the air for that warning smell of corpses.

  Arno dreams of death that night. Not another murder though. This dream belongs to a German industrial engineer named Schmiedecker, and is of the man’s father, walking along a bush track, begging passers-by to be godfather to his newborn child. But the man is so poor that no one is willing to agree to it.

  Not until Death comes along the path, clad in black robes, and says that he will be godfather to the child, and as a gift he will give the boy the ability to see who will live and who will die. The father is very thankful and praises Death for his kindness. But as the boy grows older he finds the gift is also a curse. He is a young man now and becomes a soldier, in charge of a troop of men. And he is ordered to lead them into combat. But when he looks at them he can see that they will all die.

  In the dream, Herr Schmiedecker, the soldier, chooses to run away rather than lead the soldiers to their deaths. But he is then stumbling through a muddy no man’s land and is surrounded by enemy soldiers. They capture him and throw him into a prisoner of war camp. And even there he is haunted by the gift, for when he looks at the faces of any of his fellow internees, he sees that are all fated to die as well. And this time there is nowhere to run away to.

  7

  Another Day

  The next morning the sun is out, shining brightly, just like it does on most days. Arno has been at the wall before sunrise, standing on the damp ground and pressing himself hard against the chill stone, ensuring that there is no trace of violence within.
Hoping for a day that will bring no major change. Nothing new. Just one more day like any other.

  But of course it is not.

  After breakfast and another protracted roll call the internees are lined up at the gates with shovels on shoulders or wheelbarrows in hands and regulation white canvas hats on heads. They are ready for a solid day’s labour working on the monument. The guard comes out of the guardhouse and sees the men assembled for work and thinks for a moment to make a joke of it. But he can’t quite form the right words in his head and so he just spits to the side and unlocks the gates.

  The internees stream out, splashing through puddles, some heading up the hill and some making their way to the quarry. Arno lets them push past him and then swings himself forward to take in the expanse of blue ocean. He feels himself calming at the sight of it. It seems so much bluer today. Bluer than it has ever been before. Larger than it has ever been before. He holds up his hands to shield his eyes from the enormity of it and then slowly turns his head to take it all in.

  There are no ships steaming towards them today. No fishing boats out on the sea. And he turns away from the direction the other men are taking and makes his way down to the beach. There are no remains of the whale left there. The storm has washed them out into the bay, where the ocean’s strong current will have dragged them far away, obliterating them more thoroughly than the sharks had.