“Why do you think you know?” asks Arno, wondering who Wolff might have been talking to. The German officer’s eyes are as blue and icy as a deep northern sea.
“If you didn’t have one you’d have denied it,” he says. “And I can see it in your face. You are the only one out of all these men in here who has that look of escape written on him.”
“What look?” asks Arno.
“That faraway look. Like you’re staring out over the horizon, even when you’re inside the prison walls.”
Arno says nothing. Neither yes nor no. He does not trust Wolff and does not trust himself to say anything.
“I thought you were my friend,” says Wolff, stepping even closer and placing one hand on Arno’s shoulder. The other he presses into his stomach, one finger extended, as if it were a gun. Or a knife. “I’d be very disappointed if I found out you weren’t my friend,” he says.
Arno feels the hard rock wall behind him. The threat before him. And ever so slowly he nods his head.
“You’ve got an escape plan alright,” says Wolff. “I’ve seen you out in the yard checking out the walls in the darkness.”
Arno has no answer for that.
“Yes,” says Wolff, and he slaps Arno on the cheek—a friendly blow, but one that leaves his cheek red and sore nevertheless. “You need to remember who your friends are, yes?” And he turns and walks away as if he couldn’t really care about Arno’s escape plans or not, but just wanted him to know he knew.
Night falls over the prison, turning the tall granite walls dark and chill. Arno is not at the walls tonight for a guard has led him back to the cell block at rifle point and told him he is not allowed to wander the yard after dark.
Arno protested that it was just turning dark. The guard looked up at the sky and waited a moment, then indicated the first stars. “It’s dark now,” he said, and then gestured towards the cellblock with his rifle. “March.”
Arno tried to explain to the man how vital it was that he be by the walls as darkness fell, but the words started sounding absurd to his own ears before he’d even fully spoken them. Like they were another language. So Arno sits on his bunk looking at Horst, who is sitting opposite him, with his blanket wrapped tightly around him. He is coughing like he has been gassed and Arno can see that he has lost a lot of weight. He says to Horst, “Do you know what you look like?”
“What?” asked Horst between coughs, glancing up at him.
“Like the photographs of soldiers who’ve been to the front.”
Horst laughs, then bends over coughing again. “Do you think the Kaiser would give me a medal?” he gasps.
“Does the Kaiser even know you’re here?” asks Arno.
“According to the Wolf Pack he does,” says Horst. Then he stops laughing and his face turns sullen. He pulls his blanket tighter around his shoulders and ducks his head lower.
Arno chews his lip a little and stares at him, as if they’re suddenly not such a long distance apart again—separated by all the unsaid words. No man’s words. But Arno tests the ground. “Do you believe them?”
Horst looks up at him, his face giving nothing away. “What can you believe in this place?”
Arno thinks for a moment to stretches out a hand and touch Horst’s hand. “Whatever you want, it seems,” says Arno.
Horst looks at him and frowns. “Little Arno is growing up,” he says.
Now Arno frowns. Tries to copy Horst’s heavy glare. He would like to cross over the centre of the cell and sit on Horst’s bunk beside him. Like two comrades might. “What will happen to the Wolf Pack now they’re leaderless?” asks Arno. “Has Lieutenant Wolff taken over?”
Horst coughs and lies down. “Nothing has changed,” he says. “Von Krupp was not the leader.” Then he rolls over to the wall, to let Arno know that the conversation is over. That he might as well be alone in the cell after all.
Private Strap walks slowly around the inner wall of the prison, as per his new orders, with his rifle held out before him, looking for any sign of movement in the dark. He makes his way carefully forward, pausing every few steps to lean against the cold stone walls and listen.
He closes his eyes like the Sergeant has taught him, so that his hearing will improve. He listens for every sound. There is a faint scuffling sound from one of the guards in the watchtower behind him, moving about. There is the soft growl of the ocean. And there is a low whisper of voices.
He opens his eyes and moves ahead a little. Listening carefully. Making sure that the footsteps he hears are his own. He keeps his mouth open just a little, so as to lessen the sound of his own breathing and heartbeat. He pauses to peer around behind him every ten steps. Just like the Sergeant has taught him. Scans the ground front and back carefully, looking for movement. But there is nothing there.
He turns his attention to the voices again. He moves on until he is under the windows of the cellblock. The voices are coming from within. He relaxes and leans up against the stone wall to listens to the muttered sounds from within. The harsh guttural tones of their language, and he wonders what they are saying? You could imagine those words meant anything—could imagine they were saying anything you wanted.
The nightmares are so numerous that night that Arno can barely keep track of them. A multitude of dark stirrings filling the prison, coming into their world to wreak havoc. He sees dark forms emerge from the shadows and wander down the corridors of the prison, like beasts stalking their prey. And he sees children lost in forests. And he sees half-naked women in soft cushions calling him to come to their embrace. And he sees sharp teeth. And soft breasts. And darkness. And he sees convicts of the old century brutalising one another. He sees fellow internees beating or buggering each other. He sees old men smashing the skulls of their guards. He sees guards shooting the internees down with machine guns. He sees a sudden shell-burst in the darkness and sees a line of soldiers advancing on him. Some with sharp fangs. Some with bosoms bared. Some more afraid than fearful. Some wanting to run. Some wanting to kill. He sees them merge and mingle and grow into a giant dark beast that solidifies into something menacing. Sees it drag its feet across the courtyard. Sees the way it has to push the door to the corridor open, rather than move through it. Sees it make its way towards his cell. Searching for him. And as it reaches his door he recognises it.
He wakes up with a start and looks to the empty doorway, understanding it is his own fear that he had seen coming for him. Which means it must be the men’s own fears that are rising from the darkness to kill them. And how is he ever to protect the men from those?
10
Another Day
The gates are open early the next morning, before the first light has appeared in the sky. Arno is sitting up on his bed pondering everything he has come to understand, when he hears the heavy clang of the gates and the clatter of many booted soles running into the prison. He hears the soldiers running into the cells and sees all the lights come on. Hears the shouting as the soldiers run down the corridors, striking the cell doors with batons. Shouting for the men to rise and assemble in the corridors. Rifle bolts click as men look about themselves in fear, suddenly dragged back three years, to the nights they were roughly turned out of their homes and interred. The men stagger to their feet, quickly clutching some clothes about them, as the soldiers appear in their cells as if they have emerged from the stone walls somehow.
Arno moves out into the corridor with all the other men, where they listen to the soldiers going through their belongings. They hear their rough shouts as they move from cell to cell, tipping over boxes and tins, upsetting furniture and upsetting people’s lives.
Arno looks up and can see the first light of the new day beginning to tint the dark sky outside the windows, from an angle he’s never witnessed before, and he understands that no day will ever be like any other day again.
The guards search for over
an hour and unearth one small still. They parade the two cellmates who own it up and down the corridor several times, while Sergeant Gore shouts out how they will not tolerate such blatant disregard to the regulations. Shouts out that they are being given better treatment than any internees anywhere in the Commonwealth. Shouts out that they should be grateful for the treatment they are receiving. Shouts out that such transgressions will be severely punished. Then, ignoring the two culprits, and holding the still before them, the soldiers turn and march out of the cells.
Arno wanders down the corridor and sees men picking through the rubble left by the guards, trying to rebuild some order. The men look around, shell-shocked. “What did they find?” he asks one man.
The man looks at him. As if it might be a trick question. Arno is about to ask him again, when he says, “Nothing.”
“Just Heinrich’s still,” says another man.
“Was that what they were looking for?” asks Arno.
“Of course not!”
“Then what?”
“If you have to ask, then you don’t need to know,” the internee tells him, as if he is addressing a very young boy.
Breakfast is a quiet affair. A guard stands at the door to the hall where no guard has ever stood before. Rumours weave a slow path from table to table. The German raider has been seen on the horizon. A guard killed von Krupp. The Emden sailors are in contact with the ship. Wolff killed von Krupp. The townspeople at South West Rocks are preparing to march on the prison. The war is going bad for the British. The Emden sailors are attempting to take over the Wolf Pack. The Allied front is near collapse. There is going to be a rebellion in the camp. The Commandant has told the guards they can shoot internees on sight if they suspect trouble. Regular troops are being brought in to guard them. Herr Dubotzki still has a few photos of Pandora he is willing to sell.
It is mid-morning when the word is passed around that the Commandant has decided to restore some privileges, including limited times outside the prison, and Arno Friedrich follow a band of men outside and stares at the bright ocean. He breathes in that calming scent of the Australian beach and bush. The land of his birth that is denied to him. He feels a sense of calm filling him that is not possible inside the prison. He looks carefully for any sign of a ship out there. He puts his hands up to screen his eyes and turns his head slowly, but he cannot see anything.
He watches the workers make their way up the hill, under close guard, to continue work on the monument. Then he turns and makes his way down to the beach. He sits on the sand there and watches some of the elder men walking in the shallows. He watches them walk along the sand, turn and walk back. And then again. The same gait with which they pace up and down the cell corridors.
Arno makes his way down across the sand. He slowly undresses, laying his watch on his clothes and then limps into the water. It is very cold today. He keeps moving until he is thigh-deep, then drops into the icy water with a gasp. He swims fast, to get the blood moving, not stopping until he is level with the end of the breakwater. Treading water there he looks back at prison, feeling that strong pull of the current trying to drag him away. He is regretful about what Doctor Hertz had told him that morning at the infirmary, that Nurse Rosa will not be permitted to come to the prison for some time, but that Intern Meyer could perform his massage therapy for him.
And he thinks, this new world is not one he can survive in.
The burial ceremony for Herr von Krupp is held on the hilltop in the afternoon. His body has already been wrapped in a white sheet, sealed in a wooden coffin and lowered into one of the trenches by the monument, accompanied by the mocking warbles of currawongs and the shrill laugh of kookaburras. Over 400 internees, dressed in the remains of old suits and ties, the uniform of funerals, have made their way up the thin bush path to assemble by the half-built monument. They stand amongst the broken rocks and the piles of earthworks and stare solemnly at the small plinth as if it is his tombstone, cold sullenness in their eyes.
Across the trenches and rock works the Commandant stands with a small troop of guards. He is aware that his back is to the ocean, and is aware that his position is not a good one tactically. But he is also aware that his men have a bullet in the breach of their rifles. He says in a loud voice, “We are gathered together today in memory of Mister von Krupp.” He waits for the internees to bow their heads a little, or to hold their hands together in prayer. But they stare at him fixedly, unknowable emotions in their eyes. Then he says, “I have granted permission for this service out of respect to the memory of Mister von Krupp, and I hope you will also respect his memory by appropriate behaviour here.” He licks his lips a little. “He was a gentleman and will be remembered by us as one.” Then, surprisingly, in his first role as a minister, he finds he has nothing else to say and so he beckons for Doctor Hertz to come forward.
Doctor Hertz steps across the broken ground and turns to face the internees. His first words are in English, “Thank you for the words you have spoken.” Like many of the internees, even when he is talking English, he is thinking in German and it governs his syntax. But the words then turn to German. The Commandant and guards listen carefully, as if concentrating might help them understand the foreign sounds and help them to pick up what the doctor is saying. They hear the word “Gott,” mentioned several times—but can identify very little else. And not for the first time the Commandant wonders if he should begin a course in the German language. He suspects that while it might be good for his position, it would also be recorded on a file in Sydney somewhere and one day be dug up like an old skeleton and rattled in front him.
Those there who understand the doctor’s words, hear him say, “The loss of one from amongst us is always a tragedy. But we can use that loss to bind us closer together. We can use it to remind us of who we are. We are imprisoned and far removed from our loved ones. But we should not succumb to despair. We should think of the suffering of our countrymen who are in the trenches. We should think of the suffering of our countrymen who are in other prison camps, far harsher than ours. We should think of the suffering of our countrymen far across the sea.”
And all the men look up and stare towards the horizon with such a deep longing that the guards can’t help sliding their fingers just that little bit closer to their rifle triggers. One snaps the bolt of his rifle loudly, and the internees stare at the guards and at the Commandant. A sudden shiver of fear ripples through them, like the chill of a cloud covering the winter sun. The internees take a few small steps backwards, and Herr Schwarz is jostled at the grave’s edge—where he slips and falls heavily onto the wooden coffin. He lies there a moment as if unsure what has happened.
The Commandant has a sudden foreboding of tragedy and wants to shout out to his men, to restore some order. But again words have deserted him. Nobody knows quite what to do next, until a head rises from the grave and everyone turns to look at Herr Schwarz. He blinks as if has been caught out at something shameful and he slowly raises his hands in surrender.
The Commandant sees all the men relax their grips on their weapons and he thinks: how will we ever live in peace time after all this?
The Dark Knights are again gathered in the small stone building outside the prison walls, pressing close around a single candle. Listening to the Sergeant. Looking at each other. Trying to make sense out of what he is telling them. Certain it is another test.
“They will come in the dark,” he says. “We will wake up and the first we will know of it is the sound of men disembarking in the bay. When first light arrives it will show large dark ships out there. Full of men. Then the shelling will start. They’ll hurl round after round at us to try and cover the men splashing ashore. But we’ll be all around the watchtowers with machine guns. We’ll pin them down and anyone who raises a head, we’ll blow it off. We’ll shoot them down in the water and on the sand and it will run red with their blood. But they’ll keep coming. Hundreds of the
m. Crawling their slow way up the cliffs. Digging in every few metres. Keeping their heads down. Moving slower. Getting cleverer. And we’ll keep shooting at them. Watching the corpses float out on the tide. And we’ll put an extra round into ’em just for good measure. But the survivors will dig in deeper. We’ll be up there on the walls sniping down at them and they’ll be down there sniping at us, see. And it will go on and on and on. Day after day, in the heat and the dust and flies and lice and the stink of blood and shit and we’ll never give up until we’ve finally driven them back into the sea.”
He looks around at the faces of the young men around him, all pressing so close they are almost touching.
“Don’t you see?” he says. “Years from now they’ll come here and erect a bloody great statue to you all—whether you live or die—and they’ll say this was the greatest bloody battle ever fought on Australian soil—and in the major cities they’ll march in our honour. They’ll say, never forget the boys who fell at Trial Bay. That’s what they’ll say.”
Arno cannot sleep. He tosses to the left. Then to the right. He places his head outside his blanket, then tucks it under again. He turns and looks over at Horst, who seems to be sobbing quietly again, his blanket jerking slowly under his clenched fists.
Arno closes his eyes tighter and tries to conjure up a memory of Western Australia before the war began. Tries to remember what he might have dreamed of there. He knows he should see images of dry landscapes and sun and wheat maybe—but he can only clearly remember that night they came to take him, when they threw him into the old truck and drove him away into the darkness.
He had made his way around the walls again earlier that evening, carefully avoiding the guards. But instead of searching inside the stone he found he was searching for traces of violence within the prison itself, and followed the stirrings to the base of the southwest watchtower. He waited there and listened until he was sure there was nobody up there again and then he cautiously made his way up the steps, into the guard tower and saw the empty bottles on the floor. Scattered like old bones, he thought. He saw a coil of rope in the corner, and the basket tied to it. He stood by the parapet and looked out over the bay. He witnessed the light and colour fade from the whole world, as he had never seen happen before at the prison. Saw just how much darkness there was in the world here.
The Years of the Wolf Page 20