“Well, and suppose your madman’s dream was a reality, and the Empire did—did break up, would you like it any better to be ruled by the Japanese?”
“We shouldn’t be. We don’t believe the Japanese Emperor is God, you see. You can’t rule men permanently except through an idea. Men, I say. You can rule boys—and perhaps Germans. Perhaps not. But as no German ever has been or ever can be a man it’s difficult to say.”
Hermann leaped to his feet, but, as Alfred did not, he didn’t quite know what to do. Suddenly, beside himself with racial fury and a strange unacknowledged personal terror, he kicked Alfred savagely. Alfred then did get up, but slowly and calmly. His control was perfect.
“Come on then,” he said, taking off his coat. “If violence it must be. If I don’t go for your eyes, will you leave mine alone?”
Hermann, red and trembling, looked at Alfred’s eyes and knew with despair and perplexity that the fight was off before it had started. The mere thought of gouging out Alfred’s grey eyes made him sick, though he had watched without a tremor many a fight that had ended that way. And apart from eyes, he couldn’t touch him, not even to give him a light flick. He had kicked him, but now he could do nothing more.
“Sit down again, Junker,” Alfred said kindly.
“Why can’t you leave me alone?” Hermann said thickly. He sat down, however.
“It’s important,” Alfred said. “Promise not to kick me again, or I shall have to sit the other way round. Two on the same place might lame me.”
“Why do you say no German is a man?” asked Hermann, unable to attend to anything but the insult.
“They don’t get a chance to be. It’s the system. Look here, Hermann, what is a man? A being of pride, courage, violence, brutality, ruthlessness, you say. But all those are characteristics of a male animal in heat. A man must be something more, surely?”
“He’s able to think, and control the violence and direct it.”
“So can a woman. If a woman wants to beat her daughter and the girl’s up a tree she doesn’t run round and round roaring like a mad cow, she waits till the girl comes down for food. So there’s nothing particularly manly in that.”
“A man’s able to die for an idea.”
“So is a boy of twelve. Any German boy would go into the army at twelve and go to a war if he were allowed to. No, Hermann, you’ll never get what a man is because you don’t know. I mean the real difference there is that divides men from beasts, women and boys. A man is a mentally independent creature who thinks for himself and believes in himself, and who knows that no other creature that walks on the earth is superior to himself in anything he can’t alter.”
“What? I don’t understand.”
“It’s difficult, I know. But I mean I might meet an Englishman who was more independent and spiritually stronger than I was. Then I should say, ‘There’s a better man now.’ And I’d make myself as good. But you see a Knight coming along and you say, ‘That man’s a better man by blood. He’s superior, whatever I do, for ever and ever; I must salute him, now and always.’ Another time you see an Englishman coming along, and you say, ‘That man’s inferior by blood, I must kick him.’” Alfred looked round with a grin.
“Anyone would have. And I didn’t kick you for being an Englishman but for being insulting. And it’s no good talking, for Blood is a Mystery, and a thing no non-German can understand. It’s ours.”
“Yes, and as long as Blood is a Mystery none of you will ever be men. You hide behind the Blood because you don’t really like yourselves, and you don’t like yourselves because you can’t be men. If even some of you were men the rest would like themselves better. But it’s a circle. If there’s going to be Blood there’ll be no men—never. And while you’re still boys, you’ll think that violence and brutality and physical courage make the whole of a man. You’ll have no souls, only bodies. Only men have souls.”
“Do you mean, Alfred—” Hermann spoke calmly because under Alfred’s influence he really was trying to think, and he found he could not be shocked or angry and have anything left in his mind to think with. “Do you mean that you believe in softness ? In gentleness and mercy and love and all those foul things?”
“Don’t you believe in love, Hermann?”
“Oh, friendship,” Hermann muttered, turning his eyes away from Alfred’s quizzical glance. “Yes. That’s different. But gentleness ?”
“It must be right because Hitler said it was wrong,” said Alfred promptly. “I reject the Creed entirely as I reject Hitler and the Hitler Book and Germany and the Empire.”
“And God the Thunderer?”
“I reject the idea that God lives in Germany or likes Germans better than anyone else. God, God, oh, well, I don’t know. I mean I don’t know always. But men-gods, no. No man is any more the son of God than I am. If Hitler is God, so am I. But it’s obviously more sensible to think neither of us is. More modest too.”
“What do you think Hitler was, then? Or do you deny His existence altogether?”
“I expect he was a great German soldier and a very brave man. But he wasn’t independent, because he had to hide behind Blood. He wasn’t a man. Now if you read the Hitler Book carefully—oh, I forgot, you can’t read. Well, there’s very little of it that’s Hitler’s own sayings.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve had nothing much to read except technical books and the Hitler Book, and I’m fond of reading, so I’ve studied it very carefully with a mind unclouded by belief in it as divine. It’s quite obvious that a lot of the teaching has been put in later. And even all the Blood stuff, you don’t know whether that was Hitler himself or a lot of people. It’s an unsatisfactory book. Something wrong somewhere. It leaves you empty.”
“Because you’re not a German, not even a Hitlerian.”
“Maybe. I wish,” said Alfred, with a sigh of immense desire, “that I had some other books to compare it with. There’s so much darkness. So much mistiness. Nothing but legends. England’s packed with legends. I expect all the subject countries are. It gives the people something to talk about besides their work or their wages or the misdoings of their Knight. There’s a legend about a great English Leader called Alfred, who had a huge statue in Winchester (you remember Winchester? we went there once together); it was as big as the hill behind, and he had a knife and a shrapnel helmet, but he wasn’t only a soldier, because he wrote a book. Now if I had that to compare with Hitler’s ! And a man called Alfred is to deliver England from the Germans.”
“So your dream is based on your name?”
“I’m not only going to deliver England from the Germans. I’m going to deliver the world,” said the junior Alfred with a perfectly modest air.
“What about the Japanese?”
“Oh,—the Japanese. When the German idea cracks we can all get together and crack their idea. It’s only the same one a bit different, I feel sure. But don’t you see, young Hermann, I’m not so mad as I seem, nor so vain. I am the repository, the place where a very old numan idea is kept. There must be some idea that’s the opposite of the German one, and it must be as old as the German idea. Do you see? And so it’s not me that is going to do all this, but the idea. And if you kill me it’ll go to other men.”
“And where’s it been these last seven hundred years?”
“It’s been homeless perhaps, for want of a place. Or resting. Or hibernating. But never, never dead. What is seven hundred years? Why, one man can live through a hundred. Seven hundred years is no time at all. History is only just begun—again.”
“What do you mean?” Hermann asked.
“I don’t know,” Alfred said. “I’m going to sleep. Wake me up when we ought to be going somewhere or doing something.”
CHAPTER THREE
HERMANN did not go to sleep. He watched Alfred. The slow even rise and fall of his chest, an occasional flicker in his eyelids, the relaxed look of his strong rather small hands, all gave the young man an intense quiet pleas
ure. He did not think at first at all of what Alfred had been saying. It was so wonderful to have him there, the real bodily Alfred, instead of the weakening gradually blurring mind-image he had held through the last five years. But after a while, a long while, feeling gave place to thinking, and his thinking was no longer bound by the hard heavy grip Alfred’s mind had on his, and on his whole personality. When Alfred was awake Hermann thought almost like an individual, though a very weak individual with a longing for personal dependency, but now Alfred was alseep with his heavy influence relaxed Hermann started to think like a Nazi. A dreadful idea took shape in his mind. Alfred was a self-confessed traitor, an infidel, a blasphemer, an enemy more vicious and inveterate than any Japanese. And more dangerous. If there really was in England a collection of men of the same way of thinking—of course they could never do anything—but things might happen—Hermann didn’t know what—and then Alfred must be the head of this ridiculous but horrible mind-conspiracy against Germany, against Hitler—yes, there was no doubt he would be the Leader. For a few moments Hermann left off Nazi-thinking and went back to personal feeling. Oh, if only Alfred had been by some miracle born a German and of knightly class, how he, Hermann, would have adored to serve him, to be his slave, to set his body, his strong bones and willing hard muscles, between Knight Alfred and all harm—to die for him . . . . Hermann’s phantasy faded in a heat of shame. Even to think of an Englishman being a Knight was a sin against the Blood. No, but Hermann’s duty, his obvious German duty here and now, was to kill Alfred where he lay. To stop his brain, his mouth, his wicked treacherous heart with one swift stroke of his knife on which was inscribed Blood and Honour. Alfred’s blood, steaming out over the old last year’s oak leaves, puddling and soaking the sacred soil of Germany, was the only thing that could save Hermann’s honour. If he betrayed him—but how betray a traitor?—he might not be believed. Alfred’s whole idea, unless heard from his own lips, was too absurd. It was absurd, anyway, but it had a dreadful sound of sense in Alfred’s cool voice. And in that same cool voice he would deny everything, and simply state that this young Nazi was mad, and that his insanity was patent in the extraordinary phantasies he had managed to invent. And Alfred’s record would be looked up and found to be excellent. It must be because he had been given a pilgrimage. No, that was no good, but if he killed Alfred, then there was certainty. No German would hesitate for a minute. No German would condemn him, knowing all the facts. To stab a sleeping man, to stab one’s own friend, the man from whom Hermann had had nothing but comfort and aid and kindness—but where the welfare of Germany was concerned there was no friendship, no personal love; no gratitude could exist in opposition. Had not that lesson been driven into Hermann’s childish mind ever since he could understand speech? Nothing is dishonourable, nothing is forbidden, nothing is evil, if it is done for Germany and for Hitler’s sake. Well then he must do it quickly before Alfred woke up. Alfred’s helplessness in sleep was inhibiting, but at any rate he himself—his soul (but then he had no soul) was temporarily absent. To kill Alfred awake—no, that would be impossible. This he might do. But as Hermann drew the knife from the sheath he knew he would fail in resolution. He could take the knife out, he could read the holy German words on it, he could remember his Oath taken at eighteen when he entered the Army, he could watch the sun-splashes flickering on the bright steel, he could imagine it dulled with blood, his duty done, his oath fulfilled, his friend lying dead—but he could not, he could not make his arm obey him to strike downwards into Alfred’s body. Personal love did still exist, and Alfred even sleeping had still a stranglehold on Hermann’s will. So, he was a traitor, a bad German; he was soft. Hermann put the knife away and sat in a trance of shame.
Suddenly not far away a terrific clamour broke out: a small boy screaming, madly, desperately, for help, another boy laughing—“ Noisy little devils,” Hermann thought, with half a mind to go and kick them for making such a row; a bit of hazing, he supposed—but then—was the hazed one a boy? There was something thin, a light shrill sound in the vigorous yells. It was a girl! Then they must be both Christian girls, for it was miles from any Women’s Quarters. And why should one girl laugh and another scream? Was it possible that girls should bully each other as the noble sex did? Hermann was disgusted at the idea of Christians being so close to him, and had it not been for his deep repugnance, which amounted to a fear of women, he would have got up there and then to drive them off. Alfred slept on unmoved. The screams went on and on, there was a crashing of undergrowth, the other girl, the older laughing one—Hermann jumped to his feet. Was that older one a girl? There was a queer timbre about the laugh and the occasional words, more like a boy whose voice is near breaking. A boy! Hermann hurled himself towards the sound with the impetuosity of a mad bull, and there in a little clearing he came upon the angel-faced golden-haired chorister making a determined attempt to rape a well-grown little girl of about twelve. The child had not reached the age of submission and was therefore within her rights in putting up a sturdy resistance. And as Hermann stood for an instant, watching them rolling and tumbling, clawing, kicking and biting, he caught sight of a large red cross on the breast of the little girl’s jacket. So it was a Christian! Hermann’s whole body filled with delicious thundering warming floods of rage. He loathed the boy for being even interested in girls—with his lovely face, his unmasculine immaturity—Hermann was physically jealous; he was shamed; he had not killed Alfred, but here was something at last that he could smash and tear and make bleed and utterly destroy. He reached the struggling young animals with two jumps and seizing the boy by his long yellow hair he pulled him off the girl with such force that his neck was nearly broken. He then picked him up and threw him with every ounce of strength in his body at the nearest tree trunk. The boy, perhaps unfortunately for himself, hit the tree with his shoulder, not with his head. The little Christian girl got up and ran away, clutching at her disordered garments. Her passage was almost noiseless; she vanished in the wood like a wild animal. The boy came staggering back towards Hermann, not with any heroic intention of putting up a fight, but because he had not enough sense left to run away from him. He was used enough to rough treatment, but the wrench on his neck and the crash against the tree had been too much even for his hard young body. Hermann jumped at him again, and with his fists beat him into insensibility. He took special pleasure in spoiling his face. When the boy was lying unconscious at his feet he started to kick him, in the ribs, on the head, anywhere, and would most probably have left him, not unconscious, but dead, had not Alfred, who had at last awakened and come to the scene, intervened.
“Stop that, Hermann ! You’ll kill him if you kick his head with those heavy boots. Well now, I thought I heard something.”
Hermann had stopped on the word of command. He looked at Alfred. He was red-faced, sweating, wild-eyed, a grim sight. The boy was a grim sight too. His face was already so swollen as to be unrecognisable. Alfred picked up a lock of his hair.
“It’s that boy who sang so well in church this morning. I know him by his hair. Hermann, you monster, you’ve pulled a lot of it out. He was such a pretty boy.”
“He won’t be again,” Hermann growled, and spat on the ground.
Alfred was going over the body. “Not dead,” he said. “Collar-bone broken, probably ribs, internal injuries perhaps. His skull doesn’t seem to be broken . . . He must have an iron head. What shall we do with him?”
“Leave the—lying till he rots !” said Hermann viciously.
“What made you attack him?”
“He was trying to rape a Christian girl. I wonder you didn’t hear her scream.”
“H’m. A Christian? Well, of course it would be a Christian. I did hear something, but I think it was the boy moaning when I woke up. Well, let’s get him back to the water and try chucking some on him.”
“I won’t touch him.”
“Then I must take him myself.”
Alfred arranged the boy’s clothes decently a
nd picked him up. But when he got him to the stream the cool water with which Alfred bathed his head did not bring him back to consciousness. He lay like a corpse except that he was warm, and still breathed.
“We shall have to carry him somewhere,” said Alfred at last, looking up.
“To the lock-up in the village.”
“Oh, don’t be a fool. Whatever he did he’ll have to go to hospital before he can be punished, or even tried. Come, get him on to my back if you won’t help with the transport.”
“I won’t touch him,” said Hermann again, with sullen obstinacy. “It’s nothing to do with you. If I choose to leave him here it’s my business. I tell you, he was trying to rape a Christian, and even if she’d been a German she was under age. It was quite a little girl.”
“I suppose you aren’t at all annoyed because the boy is under age?” asked Alfred sarcastically. “Because he’s a pretty lad who ought only to be interested in men?”
“You can do what you like and go where you please, I’m going home !” Hermann said furiously. “Heil Hitler to you and good-bye.”
“Heil a donkey!” said Alfred, rather annoyed. “I don’t see why even a Nazi should be such a stupid savage as you are just now.”
Here the boy created a diversion by trying to sit up. He fell back with a stifled moan, and out of the corner of one hideously swollen eye looked at Hermann.
“Do you feel better?” Alfred asked in German.
The boy painfully turned the bit of eye he could see with to Alfred.
“Yes,” he whispered.
“Can you stand?”
“I might.”
They got him to his feet, and this time Hermann did help, impelled by a very sober glance from Alfred. The boy made no sound except a little grunting, though the process of getting up must have been torture.
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