Otto's Phoney War

by Leo Kessler

  ‘I ’spect you’re right, Wurm,’ the other man said, his handsome face suddenly gloomy. ‘Berlin was full of rumours of war when I left.’

  ‘What did you do in Berlin, Stahl?’ Wurm asked deciding it was wiser to change the subject.

  ‘Not much. What could a bloke like me do when his Old Lady is walking the pavement, or used to before she lost her biters, whose Old Man stayed one night and never returned.’ He smiled at the other man with disarming frankness, as if he confessed every day to a virtual stranger that he was a bastard. ‘Besides I’m not in the Party and that’s as bad as having leprosy as far as most employers go. So,’ he shrugged expressively, ‘what do you do? A little job here, a little job there.’ He made a twisting gesture with his right hand, as if he were swiftly concealing some object behind his back. Wurm stared up at the other man in amazement. ‘You mean – you organised things?’ he gasped.

  ‘Found them before they were lost, I prefer to say,’ Otto agreed with a grin. ‘Why not? Don’t you know we’re governed by a bunch of crooks? The only difference between them and me is that they’ve made being criminal legitimate.’

  ‘You shouldn’t say things like that, Stahl,’ Wurm whispered urgently, dark eyes behind the thick-rimmed glasses, flickering anxiously left and right, as if there might well be a Gestapo-man just behind him. ‘You can get into trouble, serious trouble.’

  Otto gave him one of those winning smiles of his. ‘Not Otto. He’s just a little bit smarter than those crooks at the top, just one jump ahead.’

  ‘I’m not altogether happy with our leadership myself,’ Wurm said carefully. ‘You see I’m a catholic. We all are around here. And in recent years the Party has treated our priests pretty rotten, forbidding them to preach from the pulpit, threatening them, and worse – the camps.’ He whispered the word apprehensively, and bit his bottom lip, as if he had just suddenly realised he had said too much.

  Otto laughed at the other man’s obvious fear. ‘You know I was a passionate Nazi myself up to four or five years ago, when I was a kid. You see, because my Old Lady was on the pavement in Berlin, I was brought up by my grandfather in Stralsund on the Baltic.

  ‘He was the old school, the Kaiser, Sedan Day and the Prussian Guard – he’d been in the Grenadiers. So it was understandable that I grew up just dying to become cannon-fodder for the Führer when I was old enough. I dreamed of dying in a trapped U-boat under the North Sea, hurtling down in one last desperate dive in a Stuka, going over the top to slaughter frogs.

  ‘Hell, I saw that Hitler Youth propaganda film ten times over in the cinema. I cried each time that communist stabbed him right at the end, and he’s lying there dying on the cobbles with the blood all over his face and he starts to sing the Hitler Youth Song. I used to bawl my eyes out!’ Otto laughed softly at the memory. ‘But then I grew up – and grew up fast when it happened – and I knew that these new leaders were pigs and killers and worse criminals than you’d find in any prison.’ His face hardened. ‘And when I realised that, I decided I'd have have no more truck with their rotten system. I did a bunk from Grandfather, found the Old Lady in Berlin and that was that. I was in the organising business, for better or worse.’

  ‘But what happened, Stahl?’ Wurm asked. ‘What made you change your mind about the Nazis?’

  But before Otto could answer that question, Forz began shrilling his NCO’s whistle to indicate the dinner-break was over. Otto looked over and saw Forz crooking his big finger at him with a malicious grin on his beer-flushed face. That could only mean one thing: he had finally found some way of taking his revenge on the damned Berliner who had insulted him so audaciously that dawn.

  CHAPTER 3

  ‘But I don’t want a servant,’ Walburga whined, as she lay on the couch in her nightdress revealing her ample thighs and a goodly portion of her massive bosom, a bandage soaked in vinegar wrapped around her head. ‘What should I do with a servant, especially a man? Men are always underfoot in a house. Besides,’ she opened her eyes and flashed Forz a warning look, as he gazed at her thick white thighs with frank lust, ‘he might attack me – you know, that way?’ She pulled her gown down over her thighs. ‘All men are pigs. They’re always after that one thing.’

  ‘He’d better not,’ Forz said hotly, realising that Walburga was working up to one of her ‘migraines’ again; he’d be sleeping in the spare-room this night. ‘I’d have the eggs off him with a blunt knife if he ever laid his little finger on you, Walburga my sweet temptation. No, don’t you worry, my little schnuggi. You just give him the orders and he’ll carry them out. Empty the pisspot in the morning, beat the carpets, carrying up the briquettes from the cellar, peel the potatoes for dinner – that sort of thing. Keep the cheeky bastard busy all the time while you have a good rest so that at night you can be fit and, well, you know what I mean?’ he ended lamely, his big broad face suddenly red, as if with embarrassment.

  ‘Yes, I know what you mean, you big horned-ox!’ she said. ‘That’s all you ever think about.’ She sniffed. ‘For you, I’m just a thing to be used when your animal desires get too much for you.’

  ‘My little cheetah, don’t say things like that,’ Forz answered hastily. ‘You know I’ve only got your welfare at heart. Please, let me bring him in and see what you think. If you don’t like him, I’ll send him packing … There, have one of these chocolates I’ve just brought you.’ Hastily he pushed the expensive box of chocolates in front of her.

  ‘You can’t bribe me, you know,’ she said, picking up one of them and biting into it a little greedily. ‘All right, wheel the fellow in.’

  Forz didn’t wait for her to change her mind. Swiftly he slipped outside into the corridor where Stahl was waiting, staring intently at a picture of Walburga in a woollen bathing suit which revealed her abundant charms all too clearly.

  ‘Get your filthy optics off that photo!’ he barked. ‘I won’t have you looking at the little woman in that manner.’

  ‘In what manner?’ Otto asked innocently.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ the big NCO snorted. ‘As if you were whipping her knickers off her and all … Now remember you are in the home of a senior NCO of the Greater German Army. We’re good solid folk here, none of your Berlin trash. And I'll tell you this for free, Stahl,’ he said in sudden triumph. ‘This is not going to be any cushy number, not with my wife. In this house we make fried tatties out of shit – and don’t you forget it. Now move those brittle bones!’

  ‘I won’t, Sergeant Forz,’ Otto said easily and moved his ‘brittle bones’.

  ‘This is him, Walburga,’ Herr Forz said as the two of them stood poised at the door.

  For what seemed a long time Walburga Forz did not seem to hear, busy as she was with the chocolates, biting into the ones she didn’t particularly like and leaving them half-eaten, in favour of those she did like. But finally she deigned to look up.

  Standing slightly to the rear of the big NCO, Otto winked at her and pursed his lips, as if he were about to plant a large kiss on her left breast which had almost slipped out of the loose gown.

  She frowned, but she did not pull up her gown which she would have done if she had caught Forz staring at her body in that way. Instead she took up another chocolate, little finger spread out, and made a great play of eating it in what she considered a ladylike manner.

  ‘What do you think, Walburga my little sweet pie?’ Forz asked anxiously.

  ‘Ask him if he can iron clothes,’ she said in a little demure voice, only slightly spoiled by how full her mouth was. ‘You know how the heat from ironing affects my migraine.’

  ‘Of course … of course, my little sweetie,’ Forz said hastily. ‘All right, you heard Frau Forz,’ he rapped to Otto. ‘Can you iron?’

  ‘Naturally, Sergeant,’ Otto replied easily, his cheeky gaze running up and down the wife’s body with what appeared to be undisguised admiration. ‘I’m especially good with ladies’ lingerie. I was taught to do ladies’ intimate things by my old mothe
r. She ran a little service for well-born ladies in Berlin,’ Otto lied glibly, remembering the shop the Witch had managed for lesbians behind the Anhalter Station when she had been unable to work the pavements herself. ‘You can rely on me, Frau Forz.’

  ‘Did you hear that, Walburga?’ Forz said eagerly. ‘He’s very good with ladies’ lingerie.’

  ‘All right,’ she said, appearing to be indifferent. ‘I’ll take him – on a week’s trial, that is. If he’s no good then, he’s to go. Klar?

  ‘Alles klar,’ Sergeant Forz agreed quickly and turned to Otto with an unholy grin on his broad face. ‘Now you’ve had it, my lad,’ he chortled, escorting him outside and closing the door on the woman reclining on the couch, cheeks bulging with chocolate, uneasy strange thoughts already beginning to flood through her mind. ‘By God, Stahl, my Walburga will lead you a merry little dance, I’ll be bound!’

  Stahl nodded his head slowly, keeping his eyes lowered so that the grinning NCO could not see the look in them. ‘I expect you are right, Sergeant Forz,’ was all he said.

  Thus Otto became Frau Walburga Forz’s house-servant, apparently kept busy all the day with the chores that the big blonde pressed upon him. Within the week he had lost a considerable amount of weight, and at night, he headed straight for his bunk to collapse there in an exhausted sleep, completely worn out.

  Even on their first free Sunday, his comrades could not drag him out of bed to take the bus to Aachen and see the sights, in particular the whores who frequented the dingy cobbled streets behind the border city’s Hauptbahnhof. ‘Don’t talk to me about women,’ he moaned and held up his hands, as if to ward off some monstrous female or other. ‘I’ve had enough this week. I’ve got them right up to here.’ He drew an angry line underneath his nose. ‘A real noseful!’

  The sight of the skinny young civilian, dark circles of exhaustion under his eyes, beating the carpets wearily, staggering as he did so, gave Forz a great deal of satisfaction. More than once as he came home for his dinner, he would smirk and remark, ‘I see she’s keeping you at it, Stahl, eh?’

  ‘That she is, Sergeant,’ Otto would croak. ‘That she certainly is!’

  And the big NCO would go inside with a big grin on his drinker’s face, telling himself that she was giving the new servant a really hard time; he was getting his own back on the cocky young Berliner one hundred per cent. There was only one fly in the ointment. As soon as they went to bed each night, Walburga would turn her back on him and fall immediately into a deep sleep, in spite of the fact that she had a servant to do the housework now and could spend her days lying on the couch, eating chocolates and reading the fifty-pfennig novelettes she favoured, which were always about mysterious handsome young aristocrats and simple, if beautiful, village maidens in love.

  At least this aspect of the situation was very puzzling and a bit frustrating. The only improvement he could note was that she no longer complained of her ‘migraine’, but then even that didn’t mean very much, as she was always in a drugged sleep when he attempted to approach her after the light went out. As he complained to his cronies of the sergeants’ mess more than once, his big broad face puzzled and sad, ‘There’s no way of pleasing the ladies, comrades. Give ’em a little finger and they take the whole shitting hand.’

  It was a sentiment with which an exhausted Otto could have only agreed.

  Thus while a sorely plagued Otto apparently suffered the endless demands of Frau Walburga in that remote corner of Germany, Berlin prepared for war…

  The comings and goings between the capitals of Western Europe were manifold. Diplomatic gentlemen in black jackets and striped pants hurried back and forth in an attempt ‘to save the peace’, as they invariably called their efforts reading each other long ‘communications’, full of high-faluting, pompous phrases. Knowing all the while that they were participants in a game, an absurd diplomatic game, being played for the benefit of the citizens of the nations that they represented.

  The European War had already been decided upon. In Warsaw, capital of the immediate victim Poland, Foreign Minister Colonel Beck had resolved, almost eagerly, to commit national suicide: he would resist German aggression with blood and honour.

  In Paris, Daladier, the swarthy-faced grocer, had made the same decision, although he knew that half the French Army would collapse as soon as they heard the first shot fired in anger. In Moscow the Georgian dictator with the pock-marked face was already counting his chickens before they were hatched; he’d go to war, too, but through the back door. Let the Western powers fight each other to the bitter end; thanks to a pact with Germany, Eastern Poland would be his.

  Most amazingly of all, the British arch-appeaser Chamberlain, he of the black Homburg and rolled umbrella, had made a 180 degree about-face, and was rattling sabres with the best of them. He was going to fight too.

  They were all so eager to plunge Europe into another great war that Hitler, the dictator who had kept the Continent in fear for half a decade now, was suddenly confused and not a little fearful. Abruptly he began to lose his nerve. He postponed the attack on Poland once – and then again. ‘What’s their game, Ribbentrop?’ he asked his Foreign Minister time and time again. ‘What’s their damn game? … ’

  In that remote border country, strange games were now being played daily in Frau Forz’s bedroom, behind those tightly drawn flowered curtains. And Otto’s strength was being sapped hourly by the insatiable demands of Walburga Forz, she of the ‘migraine’, who had discovered late in life in the arms of the stranger from Berlin that the bed games she had once found so disgusting, were really almost unbearably enjoyable. But it was the ‘doctor game’ which was the last straw for a sorely tried Otto, and which decided him that his days as a house-servant were numbered.

  On the bright sunny morning of Thursday 30 August 1939, Walburga Forz, completely naked and slightly tipsy (for she had taken to drinking cognac after breakfast now as soon as her husband had departed for work), welcomed a slightly apprehensive Otto with open arms and the announcement, ‘Today we play doctor, Otto!’

  ‘Doctor?’ he echoed.

  ‘Yes, like the kids play down behind the woodshed when they think their parents are not looking,’ she giggled and swayed a little unsteadily. She picked up the frilly white apron that lay ready on the bed and slipped into high-heeled shoes, while she bound the apron around her plump waist. ‘You see, I’m the doctor … ’

  Gently she forced him back on the big bed, dominated by the portrait of Sergeant Forz on the wall, dressed in his best uniform, complete with ceremonial dagger and suitably martial look on his face, and slipped her long wet tongue into his ear, ‘and you’re the patient.’

  ‘Hey now wait a minute!’ he protested, but already she was hurrying into the kitchen, laughing gaily as she went and muttering something about fetching her medical kit.

  A moment later she returned, smiling wickedly, her heaving breasts billowing like melons under the white apron, a bottle in one hand, complete with two glasses, and bandages, plus sticking-tape and scissors in the other.

  ‘Hey, now what in three devils’ names do you think – ’ She smothered his protest with a damp, open-mouthed kiss, pouring two glasses of Cognac as she did so.

  ‘There,’ she breathed, her eyes gleaming, her face flushed, presenting him with a glass. ‘Toss that down behind your collar in one go.’ Suddenly she looked serious. ‘Do as the doctor tells you, naughty boy. You see, that is your anaesthetic. We don’t want our little patient to feel any pain, do we? Come on now.’

  ‘Oh sit on your thumb!’ Otto groaned, suddenly panicked by the sight of such obvious sexual eagerness; she was at it again. In one draught he drank the cognac. An instant later she started to claw open his flies with eager fingers.

  Resigned to his fate, he let it happen. She started to draw down his trousers, over his waist, down his thighs and along his stockinged feet, muttering all the while with tipsy pleasure, ‘don’t wriggle, you naughty boy. The Doctor knows wha
t’s best for you. Behave yourself or I’ll have to spank your botty –’ Suddenly she gasped at the sight revealed to her greedy eyes. ‘Oh dear!’ she breathed in awe, taking a quick drink from her own glass, ‘that does look a nasty wound, a very nasty one indeed.’ She took the pencil she had in her apron and cautiously prodded him. ‘You poor boy,’ she breathed, a mad look on her sweating purple face now. ‘How you must be suffering! Don’t worry though, the good Doctor will soon have you cured.’

  ‘What are you going to do, Walburga?’ Otto hissed, as she turned and fumbled with the bandages.

  But she was no longer listening. Now she had gone completely into some private world, oblivious to him, concerned solely with her own bizarre, sexual fantasies.

  What happened next would cause Otto occasional nightmares for years to come, even after he had killed men with his own bare hands and fled two thousand kilometres through war-torn Russia with every man’s hand against him.

  Muttering crazily to herself, the moisture dripping from her puffed-up sweat-glazed face, her hair hanging down in wild disorder, she began to bandage him up, crooning now again something about ‘this hurts me more than you, you naughty boy. So don’t cry or the Doctor will be angry with you.’

  Otto let her satisfy her desires in her own manner, trying not to hear the puffing and little groaning sounds she was now making, tormented as she was by some private ecstasy.

  Finally she gave a kind of horse-like whinny and he opened his eyes in alarm to see her sagging against the side of the bed, her nipples standing out like red bottle-tops, as if she might faint at any moment, her eye-lashes fluttering wildly, the sweat pouring down her cheeks in streams.

  ‘What –’ Otto stopped short. Something like a large white cocoon lay along his stomach, somehow sinister and not a little frightening. ‘Look … look, what you’ve done to me!’ he exclaimed in horror. ‘My salami looks as if it’s been through a meat-grinder.’