He tilts his head back and breaths in the scent of distant eucalypts and salt air. It smells like freedom to him. Arno then makes his way right down onto the sand. It is all pock-marked with the force of the rain and is wet like the tide had risen half-way up the cliffs in the night. He swings his way down towards the water, noting that his are the only feet prints there. His crutches sink deeply into the damp sand as he moves, and he continues right up to the water’s edge. He lets the sun embrace him. Warm him. Lets the breeze off the water clear his mind a little.
Then the turns and looks back up on to the headland. He can see the internees making their way up the hill there like an advancing party of soldiers, holding shovels across their shoulders like they might hold rifles. Advancing on the enemy’s positions on the high point. Walking quickly. Occasionally slipping in the mud in their haste.
Arno turns again and looks out across the bay. He searches for any sign of dark shadows swimming beneath the water. He knows there will be nobody in the little watchtower chair on the beach today, but resolves to swim anyway.
He slowly undresses and lays his clothes in a small pile near his crutches. Lays his watch in his canvas hat on top of them all. Looks at the time. 9.12. He thinks what a perfect day it will be today. He limps slowly out into the water. Feels the chill of it. Colder than he could remember it ever having been before. He wades out until it is around his thighs, then, taking a deep breath, he lowers himself quickly up to his neck. His testicles strategically retreat. The chill forces his breath out and he begins paddling his arms in the water. Kicking his legs and moving around. Getting the blood moving to warm his body.
Then he turns over and begins swimming. Slow strong strokes that carry him out into the bay. The further he swims the colder the currents are, but he keeps on. He swims until he is level with the end of the breakwater and can feel the first strong pull of the ocean’s current tugging at his legs. Then he turns and looks back to the prison. He sees the dark silhouette of the watchtowers and he sees the small shapes of men in the distance, toiling with blocks of granite, carting them slowly up the hill.
He chooses to imagine it is the convicts of the last century he is watching, toiling futilely on the breakwater. Then chooses to imagine that if he turns and keeps swimming he could swim forever.
Herr von Krupp is pleased with the day’s progress on the hilltop. He arrived with the first men there that morning to find that the trenches they had dug for their memorial’s foundations were flooded and had collapsed, and many of the blocks of granite they had placed there had slid down the hill as the soil under them turned to mud.
But they were undaunted. They bailed the foundation trenches and then dug out the mud. They threw fresh soil into the base and carted more granite from the quarry. They toiled on. For Herr von Krupp has a clear vision of what this monument will look like. It will be a fine memorial to the fallen—and not just to those who have died in the prison, but those German heroes who had sacrificed themselves for the Fatherland in Europe and Africa and German New Guinea.
Though God help that no more men should die here at Trial Bay.
Sergeant Gore is in the eastern watchtower. Private Gunn is beside him, standing fast to attention. He hopes the Sergeant isn’t looking too closely at his uniform as he knows it is pretty scruffy today. His top two buttons are undone too. He had been hoping for a quiet cigarette up here in the tower alone. Hadn’t expected the Sergeant to suddenly appear before him. The Sergeant almost never climbs up into the watchtowers. But Sergeant Gore isn’t watching Private Gunn. He has his field glasses tightly up to his eyes and is staring up the hill, watching the internees there. He does not like the way they are banding together. Does not like the precision with which they are working. Does not like this sudden burst of enemy activity at all.
Private Gunn takes the opportunity to lean his rifle quietly against the side of the watchtower and bring his hands up to fasten his buttons. He almost has the second of them done up when the Sergeant lowers his field glasses and turns back to him. Gunn grabs up his rifle and lowers his chin a little to cover the last undone button.
Sergeant Gore holds out the glasses to him. “Take these,” he says. “I want you to keep a very close eye on what’s happening up there. I’ll be back every half hour for a report.”
“Yes sir!” says Private Gunn, and takes the field glasses. He looks at them curiously for he has never used them before.
“Do you know how to use them?”
“Yes sir!” says Private Gunn.
The Sergeant nods. “Good man,” he says. Gunn smiles and watches the Sergeant make his way back down into the yard. Then he lifts the field glasses to his eyes. He isn’t sure what to see through them. He moves them around until he sees the German internees up on the hill. They appear closer, but less well defined. He squints and blurs his eyes, but can’t get them to focus properly. He can’t see the features of any of the men clearly. Then an idea takes his fancy that he might be spotting for artillery in France. A little higher. Further to the left. Pow. He lowers the glasses for a moment and the full panorama of the headland and the ocean fills his vision gain, making him a little giddy. He lifts the glasses back up once more. He isn’t quite sure how to work them and isn’t quite sure what he’s meant to be watching, but he is sure the Sergeant will be back soon asking for a report, so he keeps them trained on the men up on the hill. So, he watches them toiling up the slope and digging in the mud—but what he sees is that he might have a chance for a quick cigarette after all.
At 10.58 Arno is lying on the bed in the infirmary, waiting for Nurse Rosa. “Just a moment,” she calls from the small room next door. “You’re a little early.”
He looks at his watch again, and looks around the bare room. He thinks perhaps he can detect a faint smell of her in the air around him. Perhaps. Then she comes into the room and puts her hands on her hips. She smiles broadly and says, “What is your hurry today?” She is in a good mood.
“I’m always in a hurry to see such a happy pretty face,” he says boldly.
“Ha!” she says, and sits down and picks up one of his feet. She presses it against the starched white uniform by her thigh and begins massaging it. Arno looks at her between his legs and closes his eyes. He knows he’s smiling broadly himself but he doesn’t care.
Then he opens his eyes again. He decides he prefers to watch her today. She looks up and sees his idiot stare. “And what are you grinning at?” she asks him.
He shrugs. “You.”
“Why me?”
“There’s no one else to look at in here.”
“Tsk-tsk,” she says, and looks down at his feet as he fidgets a little with his trousers. He moves the waistband around a little, trying to make it look like he’s making them more comfortable. “You should be thinking of your girlfriend, not me,” she says.
“What girlfriend?”
She looks back at him. “You must have had many girlfriends before you came here.” He shrugs again and tries to remember the name of one girl back in Western Australia. Tries to remember her face. The soft touch of the cloth of her dress when it brushed against him. White with a fine red ribbon woven into the hem. He recalls the feeling of her though. One day he stood so close to her bare freckled shoulders that it made him giddy—reaching out his hand and feeling how warm and soft the skin was. It was just that one time, but he had dreamed of touching her like that many nights, and of her touching him. Until that night he looked up and saw the six dark angels around his bed with their bayonets poised. He thought at first they had come to punish him for lusting after an Australian girl. Thought that her bigoted father might have sent them.
He remembers that he had once thought of her every day—in the old world—but now he can’t even remember her face or her name. “Let’s talk about something else,” he says.
“Like what?”
“One of your sec
rets.”
She stops massaging him and says, “What makes you think I have secrets?”
“I have always thought you must have a great many of them.”
“Well—I do have one,” she says.
“Yes?” asks Arno.
She leans forward and says in a soft and confidential voice, “Do you know what I heard from Doctor Hertz about the men from the Emden?”
During lunchtime, Welt am Montag is distributed throughout the camp. Herr Herausgeber is proud to be the one who shares news with the whole camp, as he is proud to be the one that controls the news. He walks amongst the rows of benches laying the thin eight-paged newspaper on the tables beside those men who have subscribed to it. For their payments they get to read its news first, and in the camp news is a commodity to be waited for, and savoured—even when it is mostly already known. But there are usually a few bits that are really quite new.
The copies will then slowly make their way down to the rest of the men, like a chewed-over block of dried meat, less valued each time it is passed to another man. But when it appears newly printed, men snatch it up eagerly, ignoring their meals and devouring the words in front of them. Savouring each phrase of their mother tongue. They read some parts out loud to their table comrades, smiling at the way German victories are reported in camouflaged language. Or they laugh at the obviously satirical way Australian news is reported—such as stories of sheep flocks increasing but beer production being rationed. And they always enjoy the theatre reviews, so full of hyperbole. But each reader becomes a little more solemn when they read the obituary notices for Herr Eckert and Herr Peter. The newspaper eulogises them as great heroes, and summarises their lives outside the prison—in the old world—expressing confidence at the greatness each man would have achieved in his field, had they not been interned. The men read those words several times over and then turn back to their meal—sated on words for the moment and content to pick over the articles again and again and again in the privacy of their cells.
Herr Kaufmann, who is a subscriber and is sitting beside Arno, tells him that the obituary report says that Doctor Hertz has been officially informed that Herr Peter’s death has been attributed to an accident. It was determined that he had fallen from the wall and had seriously injured himself, and had then stumbled along the breakwater where he had fallen again, and there had been attacked by the sharks. His body was then carried back up onto the breakwater by the strong tide. He reads out each word in the report very carefully and precisely, as if it is important that he himself believes it. But Arno does not believe it and asks Herr Kaufmann, “So there is nothing in the newspaper about the Emden officers coming here?”
It is all he needs to say and word quickly overtakes the newspapers being passed around, leaping from table to table. “Emden officers are coming here!” This is something so new and so compelling that copies of the newspaper are now being left unread on tables. Herr Herausgeber grinds his fists as he hears the rumour, and thinks for an instant that he should take all the newspapers back from the ungrateful men and then reprint it with the Emden story. But he knows it is too late. This is a different type of news—something that he has no control over.
After lunch, while the labourers return to the hill on the headland, Arno makes his way back to his cell and finds Horst is sleeping. His breathing is laboured and heavy. Arno has told him that he should go to the infirmary for his fever, but Horst has refused. He says Arno can go there and have his feet massaged, or any other part of him he cared for, but he would not be going.
Horst looks much worse today. Arno has told him that he should at least go out into the sunshine and try to dry the infection out of his lungs. But Horst wrapped himself tighter in his blanket and rolled over towards the wall. Fell asleep. And didn’t once taunt Arno about his poor German.
Arno steps over and looks at him now. There is heavy spittle hanging out his mouth and mucus blowing from his nose when he snores. Arno reaches out and puts his fingers gently on Horst’s brow. It is a peculiar feeling, for it is the first time he has ever touched him. The skin feels hot. Clammy and hot. Arno runs his fingers slowly around the edges of Horst’s face and wonders if he can feel that in his sleep and imagine it might be his wife. He pulls his hand back and takes up the blanket to tuck it a little tighter around Horst’s neck. And then he sees a book there. Between Horst and the wall. He thinks it not a safe place to put a book and he picks it up, meaning to put it onto the shelf above his bed. And then he sees the photo sticking out of it. It is probably a picture of Horst’s unseen wife and children, he thinks, and he pulls it out to look at it. But it is not Horst’s wife. It is a small photograph of Pandora, as she had danced for the men in the hall. He looks at it and feels his own skin turning hot. Then he opens the book and lets it fan open in his palm. It is a diary like his own, full of small tightly scrawled Gothic print. And there are photographs between the pages. He pulls out another. It is a picture of a woman, heavily made up, leaning against a chair. One hand is held up beside her face. Her long hair is tied back behind her head. There is a look of boredom on her face. Sensual boredom, Arno thinks. A look he has seen before. Then he knows where. The women’s face. It is Klaus Peter.
Horst suddenly coughs and turns on his pillow. Arno quickly puts the photos back in the book and slips it down beside Horst’s head, then turns and leaves the cell, the ground feeling just a little giddying beneath his feet.
Sergeant Gore is alone with the Dark Knights. Just him and his six chosen, in the remains of an old stone store building that the convicts built outside the prison walls. The darkness within is dissipated by a single candle and he is whipping them into a frenzy, talking loudly, above the sound of rain falling outside.
“The Hun was the first one to use gas,” he says. “He had no principles about how ungodly a weapon it was. At first they used to lay out long pipes and pump it towards our trenches, but sometimes the Good Lord would turn the wind back towards them and they’d get a mighty dose of their own medicine.”
The six chosen smile and chuckle, despite being cold and wet.
“But the Hun is crafty,” Sergeant Gore says. “He then loaded it into shells and shot it at our boys from many miles away.”
The men curse the Hun’s ingenuity in warfare.
“But he is crafty because he is a coward,” Sergeant Gore says. “He is notorious for trickery and deceit. Did you know that the cruiser Emden had been disguised as a merchant vessel.” He looks around the group. “The captain had a false funnel constructed to disguise the ship. Too many merchant vessels were lured falsely into their doom because of Hun trickery.”
“Did they fire gas shells at them?” asks Private Strap.
Sergeant Gore turns and looks at him. Sees his question was serious. “Gas is not effective at sea because of the high winds,” he tells him. “It is most effective inside a confined space.” Private Strap nods his head very slowly, as if that is a statement he is committing to his memory forever.
“Hun officers are skilled in deceit and treachery,” he tells them, “and you’d all be advised to keep a very, very close watch on our new guests. It’s my bet that they’ll be up to something before very long.”
The six men nod their heads eagerly. It is happening at last. The war is coming to them!
The truck with the Emden officers arrives in the middle of the afternoon. The men working on the memorial on the hill pause to watch it drive out of the dark forest and up the thin road. They lean on their shovels and follow its slow progress up to the prison gates. They see a small squad of guards emerge from the guard house, and, peering harder now, shielding their eyes from the sun, watch carefully as four men climb down from the truck and be led into the prison at close gun point.
The internees look at the rock and dirt at their feet and then look at Herr von Krupp. And one by one they shoulder their shovels and make their way down the hill back toward
s the prison.
The Emden officers are standing in a small group together, with their Captain in front, as they have stood every time they had been transferred over the past three years. Commandant Eaton comes out to greet them, but he does not shake their hands. The four men look around the empty prison yard and look at each other.
“I trust your journey here was not unpleasant,” the Commandant says.
“There was some small trouble at the township,” says Captain von Müller. “Many protesters. Some throwing rocks. Apparently, many of the locals do not want us here.”
He has a thin face with a pointed nose, and high cheekbones. And Captain Eaton thinks he has seen the like in a Biblical painting somewhere. Perhaps one of the ancient kings. Perhaps. “Yes,” he says. “There is a certain amount of antagonism from the local people. They tolerate the internees, but are less accepting of actual prisoners of war who have engaged in military activities against them.”
“I don’t recall ever shelling this tiny hamlet,” says von Müller. “Did we ever raid here, Wolff?” he asks one of the lieutenants behind him.
“No sir,” the surliest looking of them says. “I’m sure I would have advised it a waste of shells.”
The Commandant’s face reddens a little. He sees this man has the most piercing blue eyes—and his hair is so fair it is almost white. He also sees a twinkle of danger in the man’s eyes, undimmed by almost three years of captivity. “We are used to a well-regulated and organised lifestyle here,” he tells his new prisoners. “Life is not hard, but you will be expected to follow the regulations and not cause any disruptions.”
Captain von Müller makes the slightest of bows, and then asks, “You have many men here?”
The Years of the Wolf Page 15