by Sven Hassel
‘No parsley,’ says the Old Man.
‘Can we use kale instead? Plenty of that,’ suggests Tiny, sticking his head up from the cellar. He has put himself in charge of supplies.
‘Let’s try,’ says Porta. ‘Maybe the bortsch’ll be the better for it. We have, for God’s sake, five pieces of garlic? We can’t do without that!
‘’Ere,’ says Tiny, throwing a bunch over to him. ‘Give it the lot. It’ll only make it better! The fur Jew’s David always used to say you couldn’t ’ave too much of it. Makes your prick stick up like a flag-pole on Adolf’s bleedin’ birthday!’
‘We need sour cream’ says Porta. ‘I must have sour cream!’
‘Put some vinegar in it,’ suggests Gregor. ‘That ought to make it sour.’
‘All we need now’s butter, salt and pepper,’ shouts Porta, and begins to sing the drunken milkman’s song.
‘’Ow much pepper then?’ asks Tiny, from the cellar. ’There ain’t more’n one sack down ’ere.’
‘Idiot,’hisses Porta. ‘All I need’s a teaspoonful!’
‘The water’s boiling,’ shouts Heide, warningly, chasing the schoolteacher round the cauldron, at the double, five times.
‘Get moving,’ shouts Porta, ardently. ‘The onions. The white of the leeks. The cabbage. Half the beetroot, and the celeriac in narrow strips.’
‘Got it!’ says Tiny. ‘These two coolies of mine’ve done that. If it ain’t good enough, say the word an’ I’ll cut their balls off for ’em!’
‘Can it, Tiny! You talk too much. It makes me nervous,’ Porta warns him. ‘Now, we brown the veg’ a smidgin in good unsalted Ukrainian butter. There’s no butter like Ivan’s butter. If that’s what old “GROFAZ”8 is after in Russia then I’m with him all the way! In with the meat now, and while it’s cooking we’ll sing the Poacher’s Aria from Hegerbrauten. Tiny’n Albert can do the baritones and Heide and Gregor the sopranos. Ready?’ Porta taps his wooden spoon three times commandingly on the giant pot, and from the sooty kolchos the Poacher’s Aria rings out over the snowy steppe.
Porta drums on his chest and his flour bag falls off his head. He places one foot on the back of the schoolteacher, who is lying on the floor polishing the SMG on Tiny’s orders, and assumes the attitude of a big-game hunter.
‘Der Förster ist tot, Der Wilddieb lebt? he sings in a ringing voice.
‘Listen to ’im,’ cries Tiny, admiringly. ‘Don’t ’e sound bleedin’ wonderful though?’
We sit in a circle round the bubbling cauldron. Porta hums a Russian harvesting song, as he shakes the garlic into it.
‘There wouldn’t be a little duck lying around down there now, would there?’ he asks Tiny.
‘Find a duck!’ Tiny orders the ex-Oberst, who does find one.
‘I must explain this to you,’ says Porta. ‘It’s a thing one should know. There are two kinds of bortsch. There’s ordinary, common or garden bortsch, the kind the Tartars and the Muscovites gollup down by the gallon. Then there’s party bortsch, the kind the Poles and the Ukrainians go in for. First they brown a duck, then they fillet him, take out all his bones and sinews and cut him into small pieces. Then singing a few bars of “Katerina Ismailova” the while — they let him fall piece by piece into the soup. Like this. Plop, plop, plop, plop! And every time the duck goes plop you can make a wish for something good.’
‘Like a piece o’ cunt, maybe,’ cries Tiny, his eyes shining.
‘Hasn’t that goddam bortsch been cookin’ long enough?’ demands the Old Man, impatiently, licking his lips wolfishly.
‘To a master cook,’ Porta warns seriously, ‘there is nothing worse than impatient guests! You may be boss of this outfit, but stay out of the kitchen. That’s minel Obergefreiter by the Grace of God, Joseph Porta, Chef!. If you cannot wait until this incomparable Russian chef d’oeuvre is ready, then I would advise you to take a little walk outside, and take anyone else who is impatient along with you!’
Our patience is sorely tired while Porta continues, imperturbably, the operation of skimming off the soup. We find our jaws champing automatically up and down, and our stomachs rumble, as he slowly, and with a dignified air, slices the meat into cubes and drops it into the pot. Finally he pours in the beetroot juice with a sanctified air, and at the same time invokes a blessing on the soup from the God of all the Russias.
We almost fall over one another when he tells us to come along with our mess-tins. He orders them to be lined up like soldiers on parade.
Tiny almost shoots the schoolteacher and the ex-Oberst when they try to put their mess-tins alongside ours.
‘Slaves to the back o’the queue!’ he roars. ‘In Jesus’s time you’d ’ave et with the bleedin’ dogs, you would. Ain’t you never read the Bible, you upper-class bastards?’
Porta puts a large lump of butter in each mess-tin, and with the mien of an archbishop initiating a line of novice priests, he pours the soup over the butter.
‘Dip deep with the ol’ ladle, my son,’ slavers Tiny, his eyes glittering with hunger. ‘The best’s always at the bottom!’
Finally Porta sprinkles each helping with chopped kale and pours on sour cream.
When Tiny has got through three helpings he takes pity on the schoolteacher and the ex-Oberst.
‘You two duds’re ’ungry too, I suppose?’ he asks, graciously. ‘Go on over to Obergefreiter Porta, then, with your mess-tins. If, by mistake, you find a piece of meat in your soup, you will report to me with it immediately, Panjemajo?’
‘Stop tormenting those poor sods,’ hisses the Old Man, irritably.
‘Call feedin’ ’em tormentin’ ’em, then?’ shouts Tiny, astonished. ‘What you want me to do then? Wipe their bleedin’ arses for ’em, so’s they don’t make shit-tracks in Adolf’s army pants, per’aps?’
The first hour or so we just shovel bortsch into us, without much talking. When we cannot get another bit down, we lean back and feel wonderfully satisfied.
‘When good old Germany has lost this war,’ Porta philosophises, ‘and has recovered somewhat from this bashing, I think it would be a good idea for me to open a restaurant in Berlin. I think I’ll buy the ruins of “Kempinski”. Get it cheap I’d think. I’ll sell everything: New England stuffing, roast turkey American style, cockerel in the Roman fashion.’
‘Do not forget “Poulet au sang”, from France, mon ami,’the Legionnaire adds to the list, lighting a Caporal.
‘Wouldn’t dream of forgettin’ it,’ smiles Porta, ‘just as I wouldn’t think of forgettin’ “Greek egg-plant au gratin”, and cakes from the Jewish kitchen for dessert.’
‘You nearly make me throw-up,’ Julius Heide breaks in, furiously. ‘How can you bring yourself to even speak of such Yiddischer filth?’
‘Rather have “lamb à la Turcque”, would you?’ says Porta, superciliously. ‘I’d have that for patrons of your kind!’
‘You’d have “Venezuelan fish soup” on your menu, I suppose?’ says Gregor, licking his frost-cracked lips.
‘What about “Paelle Valenciana”?’ shouts Barcelona, from up on the window-ledge.
‘What in the world’s going on here?’ comes a creaking officers mess voice from the doorway.
‘Attention!’ shouts the Old Man, jumping up in a fluster, and dropping his silver-lidded pipe.
With lips pressed tightly together, one-armed Oberst Hinka enters the low-ceilinged room. It is filled with the aroma of bortsch.
‘What’s this?’ he asks, looking interestedly into the pot. There is a little of the soup left.
“The favourite soup of the Russians, Oberst, sir!’ crows Porta.
‘Give me a taste,’ smiles Hinka.
Porta fills a mess-tin for him.
‘And the adjutant, perhaps?’ asks Porta, looking at the Leutnant standing nervously, like a laying hen, by the door.
‘Don’t ask silly questions, Porta,’ answers the Oberst, between mouthfuls.
Doubtfully the adjutant accepts a mess-tin. He cann
ot conceal that he does not trust Porta’s culinary art. It would not surprise him if there was a fast-acting poison in the soup.
‘What a wonderful soup,’ cries Oberst Hinka, handing back the empty mess-tin to Porta.
‘Yes, sir, these untermensch know what food’s all about, sir,’ says Porta appreciatively. ‘You ought to try Selianka sometime, sir. Its their salmon soup, sir. They make it on the Black Sea beaches. I got to know it when I visited a friend of mine, Sergei Smirnow, sir. Head cook of “The Grey Tomcat”, the Tartar restaurant in Athens, sir. His Selianka, sir, why it’d draw Josef Stalin right out of the Kremlin. I’ve got the recipe, sir, if you’d like to have it?’
‘No thank you, Porta, not today,’ smiles Oberst Hinka, slapping Porta on the shoulder. ‘We’re off in an hour’s time. Keep cool, Beier,’ he turns to the Old Man. ‘I think we’re going to run into some dirty stuff. And Porta, and you too Creutzfeldt, no plundering raids, no sniffing about after loot, you two! If I hear anything of that sort’s gone on, it’ll be a courtmartial for you in two shakes, and you’ll get no mercy from me! Looting’s a serious matter.’
‘Understood, sir, understood perfectly, sir!’ cackles Porta, in a servile voice. ‘We’ve seen the warnings posted up, sir, everywhere, sir! Looting gets you the rope. Oberst Hinka, sir, beg to report, sir, we know enough to keep our fingers where they belong, sir, and not get ’em blistered. We’ve seen those posters, sir!’
Twenty minutes later Porta and Tiny have broken open a cellar door, and gone up through the floor of what used to be the mayor’s office. They ransack drawers and cupboards, throwing the contents on the floor. Finding nothing of interest they continue into the next room, where they discover a bottle of vodka in a wastepaper basket.
‘Let’s lay the dust,’ says Porta, putting the bottle to bis mouth.
When they have squeezed the last drops from the bottle, they go on, laughing and skylarking, from one ice-cold room to the next. Finally they reach the bedroom, which is dominated by an ancient four-poster bed of supernatural dimensions.
Tiny sniffs around like a hound which has scented a fox. From the foot of the bed he creeps under the heavy peasant-style quilted eiderdowns.
‘Here, cunt, cunt, cunt, cunt, cunt!’ comes hollowly from under the bedclothes. His bowler appears briefly at the pillow-end. ‘Cunt!’ he repeats, and burrows in again like a ferret down a rabbit-hole.
Porta puts his head curiously under the bedclothes to see what Tiny is doing. Not seeing him he crawls in himself, and begins to grunt like a hedgehog on a warm summer night.
Tiny does not realise at first that it is Porta crawling round in there. There is a short but violent fight in which the eiderdown is ripped from top to bottom. Feathers fill the air.
They sit up at each end of the bed and look dazedly around them. They look like two gulls in a snow storm, as feathers drift down gently on to them.
In a chest of drawers Tiny finds a pair of long red pantalettes, with lace frills, and buttoned flaps fore and aft as was the fashion at the turn of the century.
‘Holy Mother of Kazan, what an arse that bint must’ve had on her,’ cries Porta, licking his lips. ‘Even a Belgian dray-horse couldn’t fill them up!’
‘Jesus love us all,’ chants Tiny. ‘If we ’ad that arse ’ere with all accessories couldn’t we just ’ave us a pretty little old triangular tournament!’
‘Cunt,’ sighs Porta, dreamily, burying his face in the red pantalettes. He growls like a tomcat on his way to nocturnal adventures.
‘Gimme them things,’ demands Tiny. He pulls on the red pantalettes over his uniform. Porta hands him a huge brassiere.
His gasmask is in the way and he throws it out of the window.
‘They won’t use chemical weapons ’fore the next war, anyway,’ he decides carelessly.
The brassiere is filled out with two floor-cloths. They look like young Alps. Discovery of a pair of old-fashioned corsets nearly starts a fight. Porta gets them in the end.
They admire themselves in a tall mirror. The corsets are very beautiful, and embroidered all over with roses and butterflies.
‘Why butterflies, then?’ asks Tiny, wonderingly.
‘Natural enough,’ says Porta, consideringly. ‘They fly out and bring in the pricks.’
In a cupboard they find a large black hat garnished with cherries. Porta confiscates it.
‘Fancy a quick rub-off?’ he asks, wiggling his hips through the bedroom in an imitation of the whore’s walk. ‘Have it off for a tenner?’ he twitters through the open window, and kisses his fingers to a group of motorcyclists, who stare up at them as if they were seeing a kind of miracle happening.
‘Nick o’ the arse, ’alf-price,’ roars Tiny, coarsely, slapping his behind.
‘Come along, now, silly boys,’ Porta invites them, bobbing the cherries on his hat at them. ‘Get your tickets at the door. A tenner for a German ordinary. French luxury go, double price. See Sophie’s arse. Only two marks a time.’
Tiny climbs up on the window ledge and waggles his hips. The red pantalettes wave in the wind.
Porta makes a chopping motion with his hand, and spits down into the snow.
‘No good, dear,’ he says to Tiny. ‘It’s true what they say in “The Crocodile”, the Germans are just like their Führer. Their cocks’ve all shrunk up to nothing in the awful cold!’
They pull the windows shut with a crash.
Tiny stumbles, and falls into a rocking-chair which tips right over and sends him flying through a door, papered over and flush with the wall so as to be unnoticeable. He ends up in a small room behind the door, and looks around him confusedly.
‘Where’ve you got to?’ asks Porta, putting his cherry-laden hat through the broken door.
Tiny does not reply, but points silently towards a large old-fashioned safe, decorated with a red star and the hammer and sickle.
The sight sobers Porta up immediately. He runs loving, gentle fingers over the metal of the safe.
‘I always wanted to meet someone like you,’ he confides to it.
‘Watch it,’ says Tiny, doubtfully. ‘That wicked bleeder Ivan might’ve planned a little surprise for nosey bastards like us two!’
‘You’ve got crap between your ears,’ Porta says, grandly. He commences to examine the safe, millimetre by millimetre. They try to move it away from the wall but cannot budge it. They find two iron bars but still cannot move it.
Porta spits on the red star and shakes his fist at the safe.
‘Just you wait, you cold, square bastard, you,’ says Tiny. ‘We’ll show you where Jesus got ’is beer from! Don’t think we come all the bleedin’ way to Russia for you to ’ave the laugh on us!’
‘Hell!’ says Porta, thoughtfully, looking appraisingly at the heavy box. ‘We’re going to have to get her away from the wall.’
‘Why, then?’ asks Tiny, incomprehendingly. ‘The door’s in the front ain’t it? If you want to get into an ’ouse you use the door don’t you? Don’t go breakin’ down the wall at the back to get in!’
‘Shut up,’ hisses Porta, irritably. ‘It’s different with safes! The door’s for them who’s in the know. The more you piss about with that the harder it gets to get it open. You’ve got to use the back door. Wish we had an oxy’ cutter. That’d soon look after that bit of scrap iron.’
‘What about the flame-thrower,’ suggests Tiny eagerly, and is half out of the door on his way to fetch it.
‘Oh, cut it out, brainy,’ Porta turns the idea down. ‘It’d melt down the whole box and what’s inside too. We’re not collecting scrap iron, and what’s more we’re not walking out of this war just as poor as we were when we walked in.’
‘There’s somethin’ in that about goin’ into safes from the arse-side,’ says Tiny, scratching his crutch, thoughtfully, with his bayonet. ‘You remember that fur Yid from ’Ein ’Oyer Strasse what ’ad a mate, as wasn’t a Yid, who was a locksmith in Bernhard Nocht Strasse. Well, this bloke used to ’ave t
o do with safes, evenings an’ weekends, like. All them as ’e ’ad to do with ’e used to take from the back. That was what sodded ’im up though, in the end. Commissioner bleedin’ Nass an’ ’is boys with their ’at-brims pulled down, from the David Station. They got that locksmith, as wasn’t a Yid, finally. Every time a safe ’ad been give a shot up the jacksey old Nass knew it ’ad to be our locksmith. You can almost guess the rest. Early one mornin’, before the milkman ’ad left the ’alfa pinta on the doorstep in crashes old Nass with a couple other dees and wakes up the locksmith, who was in bed dreamin’ sweet dreams about safes bulgin’ with money. It’ll be nearly twenty years more fore ’e sees the outside of bleedin’ Fuhlsbüttel 9.’
‘But since this is our very first meeting with a Soviet safe, nobody’ll ever dream it was us two German liberators who fixed it,’ says Porta, unworriedly. He begins to fiddle with the combination lock.
‘Reminds you of a wireless set,’ says Tiny.
‘Programme’s a bit different, though,’ smiles Porta, indulgently. ‘With a radio you have to pay for twiddling the knobs. With this we hope to get paid if we find the right station.’
‘’Ave you, by the way, tried the door?’ asks Tiny, practically. ‘I remember one time when the fur Yid’s David’n me was ’avin a gander at a competitor’s ware’ouse’n we ’ad a lockpickin’ expert along with us. After ’e’d been on the job an hour we found out the door wasn’t locked at all! That expert ’e was so ashamed ’e went off’n got ’imself arrested by one of Nass’s silly bleeders.’
‘You’re bloody well right!’ cries Porta, pulling the heavy door open with difficulty.
Tiny laughs so loudly that the sound reverberates throughout the room and sends back echoes from all over the house, when he looks over Porta’s shoulder and sees stack upon stack of notes.
‘Millions!’ whispers Porta, in rapture. ‘Bloody millions! I never laid my pampered eyes on that much money ever! Praise the good Lord!’ he intones, with eyes turned up towards the heavens. ‘I’ll look into your temple at the very, very first opportunity! And if I run into a heathen in this country I’ll give him somethin’ to really set him thinking!’