The Years of the Wolf

by Cormick, Craig;

  “Fair enough then,” says the Private at last. Then adds, before turning and walking away, “But I didn’t do that last one.”

  Arno makes his way over the infirmary, hoping Doctor Hertz will be there. He must tell him about Horst. Must ask him to come and see him. At least to listen to his lungs and hears his cough. And perhaps to see what else is dark and disturbing inside him.

  The yard is empty of men. They have all retreated to the dining hall—or to their cells—to absorb the news. So many of them have prayed for the day they would leave this prison, but now it is upon them they want to wish it away. Arno stands in the infirmary door and looks around. The room is empty. But he sees some movement in the room to the side. He moves across the floor and calls out, “Hello.”

  Nurse Rosa is there. Arno is surprised. He had not thought to see her again. She spins away from him quickly. She is getting changed. And Arno sees everything at once. Too fast to comprehend. The startled look on Meyer’s face. The way he places the red cap quickly on his head. Tucks the wig in. Puts on that Nurse Rosa face. Sees Meyer become Rosa like it is an essential part of him. His escape from all this. Turns to look at Arno. That calm familiar look.

  And Arno grips his crutches tightly, knowing they are stopping him from falling to the ground, because the whole world has just tipped on its side a little.

  “Arno?” the nurse says. “Can I help you?”

  But Arno shakes his head. He turns and flees across the yard. He staggers as if he has been wounded. Gasps for breath. Feels a sudden pain inside him. Is unable to stop it filling his body. He wants to go to his cell and tunnel under his blankets and hide from it. Wants to press up against the cold stone wall and let its chill enter him. Turn him to granite inside. Cold and unfeeling. Unable to be hurt like this.

  Instead Arno finds his way to Herr Herausgeber’s small office. Not sure where else to go. Not sure who else he can turn to. Herr Herausgeber is sitting there at his workbench staring despairingly at the newspaper copy in front of him. He turns and sees Arno. Smiles a wan smile, like the June afternoon sunshine. “There will be no more issues,” he says. “No more records now.”

  He has started taking the photographs down off the office wall already, and it is starting to look much like the cell it always in truth was. “You could print it at Holsworthy,” says Arno.

  “No,” says the editor. “It won’t be the same. Holsworthy is too much like...” he searches for a word. Can’t find it. Then says, “Die Welt.”—the world.

  Arno watches him running his fingers over the columns of type before him. Herr Herausgeber takes the sheets of paper in front of him, gathers them together, and then places them in a folder. He then pulls more photo­graphs down off the walls and places them in the folder too. “For the historians,” he says.

  Arno swallows what he was going to say, watching Herr Herausgeber dismantling the past. He reaches up and pulls one photograph down himself. Holds it in his hands. Feels the smooth chill texture of the paper under his fingers. Feels the smooth chill texture of the faces of the people in it. And he stops suddenly. He reaches up and pulls down two other photos. Touches the faces of both, as if suddenly possessed of a new way of seeing things. As if scales have suddenly fallen from his eyes. He touches the face of Herr Dubotzki. Touches the face of Pandora. Knows they are the same. He’s not just captured her image—he’s created it.

  He looks up at Herr Herausgeber. Wonders if he knows it? Wonders if he would care anymore?

  “Do you know about tomorrow’s photograph yet?” Herr Herausgeber asks Arno.

  “What photograph?”

  “Tomorrow morning. There is to be a group photograph of all the internees. One last time. We will assemble around the inside walls of the prison and be photographed. Captured forever, huh?”

  Arno doesn’t even nod. He is looking again at the first photograph he took down from the wall. It shows a long line of men assembled in the prison yard. Bent and misshapen and blurred. At some points the photo is so indistinct the men have merged into the rock wall. He can’t pick out any of the men and then he realises that once again he has not seen clearly what was right before him. It is the photo of the convicts from the old century.

  Lieutenant Wolff is waiting for Arno in the yard and blocks his path. “Okay kid,” he says. Voice low. “No more waiting. It’s time to tell me about the escape plans now.” There is no friendliness in his voice.

  “Why are you so insistent that there is an escape plan?”

  Wolff shows his teeth and pushes Arno roughly into the wall. He says, “Because if there isn’t one, the only reason I can think of to explain your lousy German is that you are a spy for the Australians. Is that what you want me to believe? Want all the men here to believe?”

  Arno can feel the jaws closing on him. He counts his breaths, like counting the stones blocks in his cell wall. One to twelve and back to one again. Then he says, “I could only take one other. What about your comrades?”

  And the Lieutenant says, “Think of me as a lone wolf.”

  “Alright,” Arno says, after considering that for a few moments. “I’m going to escape tonight.”

  “Tonight,” says the Lieutenant. “Good. Good. We have to get out of here before they send us back to Holsworthy. There is nothing good for us there. The Black Hand gang will have a reception committee ready for us. I thought we’d live like kings here—take over and rule the place—but it was short-lived.” He realises he’s talking too much and stops.

  “Meet me after dark under the southwest watchtower,” says Arno “Near where we were the other night.”

  “But what about the guard in the watchtower?” asks Wolff.

  “He won’t be there,” says Arno. “He is involved with some of the prisoners in an alcohol smuggling racket. You know about that, yes? He will not be there.”

  Wolff considers this. “And how do we get down from the wall?” he asks.

  “I have a rope,” says Arno. Wolff smiles. Yes, a rope.

  “And then what?”

  “We make our way around the bay,” says Arno. “Through the dark woods to South West Rocks. We steal a fishing boat.” The words come easy, as if he has already written them out several times.

  “And where do we go?” asks Lieutenant Wolff. “They will follow us.”

  “You’re a sailor,” says Arno. “We will head out to sea.”

  “They will catch us,” says Wolff, and he is remembering the Emden being shelled from afar. The explosions on the deck as comrades fell burned and bleeding around him. “They will send the navy after us.”

  “You’re forgetting the German raider off the coast,” says Arno.

  “But that might as well be a dream,” says Wolff. “What hope have we of ever finding it or reaching it?”

  “We don’t have to,” says Arno. “We only have to make them believe we have reached it. We sail northwards across the bay. Towards Freedom Island there. It is uninhabited. We hide out there. They will think we’ve gone out to sea. They will send navy boats after us. But they won’t find us. They will think we have rendezvoused with the German cruiser.”

  Wolff thinks about it carefully. Putting it together piece by piece. “Yes,” he finally says. “You have been working this out for a long time, haven’t you?”

  Arno smiles.

  “And you have experience at sea?” he asks Arno.

  “Of course.”

  After lunch, the initial surge of packing slows and then stops. The internees cannot decide what to pack and what to leave behind. Almost everything they have accumulated in their rooms they have built themselves, turning the empty stone cells into living quarters. So the men return to their normal routines. Lessons and clubs and work parties. The kitchen staff are washing dishes and getting ready for dinner. The English class is meeting in the hall. The athletics club is organising a tennis tourn
ament. But Arno only watches. And he is watched carefully by Lieutenant Wolff.

  Once Arno turns to look at him and the Lieutenant gives him a long slow nod and the faintest of smiles. He knows that Wolff will kill him once they are outside the walls, as he knows so many things now. Arno has come to understand that the destructive monsters of our nightmares are not an aberration but always with us. And daily life in internment is not an escape from nightmares but a nightmare in itself—no less than the outside world at war was a larger nightmare.

  So what escape was there? What protection?

  Arno has some time to kill. Like every afternoon of internment. He sees that his watch has stopped. Probably when Lieutenant Wolff pushed him into the wall. But perhaps time has just stopped. The Commandant has restored afternoon access outside the prison, for two hours, and as Arno has no wish to spend any more time in his cell, he decides to spend time in the Germany he never knew. He makes his way down to the small village and sits on the outside veranda of the White Horse Inn. It has been mostly rebuilt. Just in time to be dismantled again. He counts out some sixpences and pennies from his pocket and orders a light snack. Beer and veal.

  The cafe proprietor, Herr Schmidt, brings him the ale and mutton and tries to engage Arno in small talk. About the weather. About his health. About his life in Germany. About the idea of moving to Holsworthy. But Arno Friedrich says, “I have no clear memory of any other life than internment here.” And so Herr Schmidt leaves him to his own company.

  Arno does not wish to think about what the prison will look like in a week’s time. The remains of furniture and bedding strewn about in the cells and corridors, and mementos and handcrafts left behind or broken. It would be like one of the towns in Europe where refugees have fled from the encroaching war.

  Instead he stares around at the pictures on the walls about him. Intern­ees in German cafes. Women smiling at the camera. All like a magician’s illusion that you know the trick to, and can no longer see as anything but a trick. There is one large photo, hanging over the door behind him. It shows two men in sailor’s uniforms, standing by an over-large life preserver. Their clothes are bright white. Behind them is a ship on the ocean, sailing towards them. Coming for them, Arno Friedrich thinks. Coming to take them to the war. He knows it is really the backdrop from some early play. Knows the German sailors don’t wear clothes that white. Knows there is no life preserver large enough to save their lives when the time comes for the ship to take them away to Sydney.

  He turns away from the photos and looks down towards the beach. He sees some men down there, standing quite still on the sands, like living photographs. And Arno has a sudden feeling that this war will never end for them. Even when the fighting one day stops they will be forever caught like this, reduced to colourless images of the people they actually are.

  It is probably mid-afternoon when Arno leaves the café and makes his way down to the beach. He moves past the members of the athletics club, standing around on the sands as if unsure what to do with themselves, then past the ranks of middle-aged men wandering listlessly up and down. He stands and stares over the flat ocean, turned so he can see nothing of the prison behind him. Cannot see its chill stone walls. Cannot see the half-repaired Alpine cafes, restaurants and other fantasies. It seems such a truly perfect day today. Unlike any other day here.

  Arno limps along the shore, letting his path wander in and out of the shallow clear water. He makes his way along the beach, heading towards the breakwater. They are meant to keep away from it, but he keeps going until he is standing beside it. Then he steps up onto the rough jumbled rocks. He feels the hardness beneath his bare foot. He places his crutches on the rock and climbs to the next block. It is much larger with jagged edges. There is a chill in the rocks despite the sun shining on them. He places his hands out for balance and then drags himself upwards.

  He marvels at the toil and suffering of the men who built the break­water. Some of the slabs of granite he stands on are large enough to fill his half of his cell. He tries to imagine what the look on Horst’s face would be if he awoke one morning and found that Arno had turned into a giant slab of granite like this. Then he thinks how strong that current in the bay must be to carry away a large slab of the rock like the one under his feet.

  He climbs on to the very top of the breakwater, standing on a large single slab of rock now, and he looks out to the open sea where he can see a distant squall approaching. A long thin grey line of clouds like a distant stone wall, is moving towards them.

  He stands there, feeling how easily he could become one of those discarded rocks beneath his feet. Misshapen and broken. Cold and unfeeling with no sense of the past. Slowly being dragged out to sea. He sits down on the slab beneath him and feels for the pain and toil and suffering of those men of the last century. Lets it solidify his determination.

  He looks up and sees the cloud front is approaching rapidly now. Other clouds have already obscured the afternoon sun and the prison walls are starting to lose their colour and fade already. Men are starting to leave the beach. He takes off his hat, shirt and shorts and places them carefully together on the rocks. When they find them it will be as if he had sunk into the rock, leaving them behind.

  Then he takes his watch off. He doesn’t need to know the time, whatever it is. For the time is now and he is ready. He steps down to the cold water’s edge and wades out through the shallows. When he is up to his waist he begins swimming—strong slow strokes that carry him slowly out into the bay. He swims for some time until he feels the first pull of the ocean’s current grasping at him. Then he turns and looks back towards the prison on the headland. Looks at those dark stone walls and tries to memorise them. Tries to imagine how they will look this evening. Dark and chill.

  And then he imagines the last play they will perform within them. He writes the scene to himself as if he were writing it in his diary. He assigns characters to roles and decides how the final plot will be played out.

  He sees Lieutenant Wolff enter the stage from the right. Moving his way slowly under the painted rock wall. Sticking closely to the shadows. Looking around for Arno. Unable to see him. He waits under the guard tower for some time, and then cautiously makes his way up the stairs. It is empty. Just as Arno had promised. There are empty grog bottles on the floor, but no rope. He looks out into the darkness and can’t even see the ground on the far side of the wall. It is too far down. It makes him feel a little giddy. He looks away.

  And as he waits there he sees the full moon start to rise over the sea. Like a bright spotlight skimming the top of the walls and the guard towers. He decides to return to the cell block. Decides he will be avenged on Arno for tricking him. But then he hears voices. Hears somebody coming up the steps of the watchtower. He presses back into the darkness and waits. The footsteps are a little awkward. There is more than one person. He crouches and tenses his muscles. Perhaps has a knife drawn. Like the one they will say he killed Herr von Krupp with. The one he had killed a guard with earlier that evening. Then they enter the tower. And he sees they are women.

  He does not know what to do. He begins to rise to his feet. Then they see him. And he hears their surprise. Hears their voices. Understands that he has been mistaken. They are men dressed as women. Dressed expertly by Doctor Hertz, the leader of the Wolf Pack—the real director of the prisoners. The man who heals their bodies and their minds. Provides relief to the sick by creating the fantasies they use to camouflage their imprisonment. He is the one who controls the alcohol smuggling. He is the one who creates the women, and lets that longing for them rise up in some of the men so it subsumes them. And then he hires them out to the love-sick men and the guards.

  He is everything Lieutenant Wolff should fear.

  One of the internees now recognises Lieutenant Wolff and holds out a bottle to him. Tells him the first one is always free, but that he must pay for the next one. But Wolff does not take it. He loo
ks into their faces. Sees one of the women is Nurse Rosa. But she talks to him in intern Meyer’s voice. She asks him if he is there to rescue her. Asks if she should lower her long hair over the parapet for them both to climb down. Asks if he has come to run away with her and sail into the sunrise.

  But Wolff says nothing. He feels desire and revulsion. Looks away.

  The men are trying to whisper, but are too drunk. They then ask him where the guard is? They tell him the guard was meant to meet them there. They owe him, they say. They have to pay him that evening, they say. But Wolff is now backing towards the stairs. Needing to escape. He has gone half-way down when he meets the dark shape. It rises suddenly from the wall as if it had been a part of the shadows there. A part of the rock. A tall dark beast with large eyes and large teeth and dressed in khaki. And with a quick blow it drives a bayonet deeply into Lieutenant Wolff’s chest. Into his heart. And Wolff, feeling the cold fingers of death inside himself, needs to know who his attacker is. He grabs for him. Pulls him a little closer. Sees the man he had attacked and thought he had killed earlier. Sees half a face distorted and scarred. Half a face calm and unravaged. But both eyes afire with the madness of war that keeps him going. A madness of the conflicting emotions of fear and hate and pain and forgetting that have sprung from deep within him and have overwhelmed him. A madness that has merged into the rock walls of the prison there, awaiting the moment to re-emerge.

  Wolff calls out as he falls. A loud shriek like the sound of guns raining havoc down on his ship as it sunk in flames and smoke. A loud shriek that rouses the Sergeant. Brings him running with his pistol drawn. Knowing it is time to fight the one battle he has never prepared for, but has long feared. Having to confront one of his own men as the enemy. Having to shoot a madman and a murderer wearing the King’s uniform.

  But these are stories that will never be told. Will never be printed in Herr Herausgeber’s newspaper. Never be photographed. Will never be recorded, and so will never have happened.