The Generals

by Per Wahlöö

  Major von Peters: Oh, yes. That’s nothing to what I and the others here have be …

  Velder: Of course, I thought about my wives and children in town and about how things would go for them if I … well, I was thinking about their safety.

  Major von Peters: Now the man is interrupting me again. I really can’t be responsible for the consequences. Isn’t it soon time to stop, anyhow?

  Velder: As late as five to two, I still didn’t know what to do …

  Captain Schmidt: I suggest that we leave Velder and his thoughts for a moment and …

  Major von Peters: … and end for today. This has all been a bit much for an honest man all in one day. Adjourn the session now, Mateo.

  Colonel Orbal: Of course. This extra-ordinary court martial is adjourned until tomorrow at eleven o’clock.

  Tenth Day

  Lieutenant Brown: Members of the presidium present: Colonel Mateo Orbal, Army, Colonel Nicola Pigafetta, Air Force, Major Carl von Peters, Army, and Commander Arnold Kampenmann, Navy. As adviser, Justice Tadeusz Haller, Ministry of Justice. Officer presenting the case, Lieutenant Arie Brown, Air Force. Prosecuting Officer, Captain Wilfred Schmidt, Navy, Defending Officer, Captain Roger Endicott, Air Force. At today’s session, Assistant Prosecuting Officer, Lieutenant Mihail Bratianu, Army, will also be present.

  Major von Peters: What about listing our ages, weights and years of service while you’re at it, Brown? Just to extend the pleasure, I mean.

  Lieutenant Brown: To tell you the truth, sir, I have received a reprimand for irregular presentation of the case.

  Major von Peters: To tell the truth? What sort of expression is that?

  Colonel Pigafetta: Who issued this reprimand, Brown?

  Tadeusz Haller: Perhaps I’m best qualified to answer that question. The comment probably emanated from the Joint Commission from the Ministry of Justice and the General Staff Judicial Department which is at present occupied with formulating the verdicts which will form the basis of the sentences of the court martial in the case against Velder.

  Commander Kampenmann: Are the sentences already being worked out?

  Tadeusz Haller: Verdicts. Yes, naturally. Otherwise it would take months, perhaps years after the session is over before they could be laid before the presidium for consideration.

  Colonel Pigafetta: Shouldn’t any complaint against one of my officers be put through the usual channels?

  Commander Kampenmann: Isn’t Lieutenant Brown attached to the Operational Department of the General Staff?

  Colonel Pigafetta: Nonetheless, he’s an Air Force officer. The matter should have gone through service channels.

  Tadeusz Haller: I’ll look into the matter.

  Colonel Orbal: This is going to be an extraordinary day. The heat! Like cutting through cheese.

  Major von Peters: Good to see Bratianu again, anyhow.

  Colonel Orbal: I say, Pigafetta, I was lying awake last night thinking about something. The air in here is absolutely bloody awful and if you switch on the fans, you’re almost blown away. For several days, I’ve had a draught down my neck. Well, I was lying there thinking and finally something came to me.

  Colonel Pigafetta: Yes?

  Colonel Orbal: Well, it came to me suddenly. As there’s no middle way with the fans, they’re absolutely useless. I’ve asked the Commander of the Engineer Corps and he says the only thing you can do is change the whole fan system and that would take at least two weeks, perhaps longer, because the most suitable type of fan isn’t in stock and has to be ordered from elsewhere.

  Colonel Pigafetta: What was it that came to you?

  Colonel Orbal: Well, that there is in fact a middle way. You could open the windows. I’ve checked that they open inwards, so we could leave the shutters closed in any case. If, for instance, you open one half of the windows over there in the corner and then the other window to the right, the one diagonally behind Kampenmann, then you’d get an even and satisfactory movement of air. Don’t you think so, Carl? Of course, if the wind …

  Major von Peters: Call in the parties now, Mateo.

  Colonel Pigafetta: Brown, open the windows.

  Major von Peters: Get going now, Mateo. Call in the parties.

  Colonel Orbal: What’s all the damned hurry? Yes, call in the parties now, Brown.

  Captain Schmidt: At yesterday’s session, the case against Velder was brought to the point just prior to the accused’s desertion from the armed forces. We are still concerned with points seventy-eight to and including eighty-two in the case, reference to desertion and high treason. When Velder’s story was interrupted yesterday he had just opened his sealed orders. He was still in the office at Checkpoint C, where, according to his own statement, he was what is called a prey to his own conflicting thoughts. The time was five minutes to two and by delaying carrying out the action-order he had already grossly failed in his duty. Velder’s next actions to a certain extent influenced the future of the nation. So it is important that we create a clear picture of the situation in general. To enable me to do this, I will refer to some written documents, first and foremost a fragment from a diary written by Aranca Peterson and presumably intended as the basis for the aforementioned memoirs, which she and Janos Edner together planned to publish, but which they clearly never completed. If you please, Lieutenant Brown.

  Lieutenant Brown: Appendix V V/33. Concerning the situation in Oswaldsburg on the night of December 13th. Confiscated documentation written by the traitor Aranca Peterson. Marked Secret according to paragraphs eight, eleven and fourteen to twenty-two.

  Major von Peters: Is all that going to start again now?

  Lieutenant Brown: Orders, sir. The text is as follows: I’ll now try to remember what happened during that decisive night, the night of the thirteenth, how and in what order it happened and how we understood it. Tadeusz left the Council buildings at about half-past eleven, soon after the final count had been made. Oswald must have gone at about midnight, followed by his constant companion Velder, the man whose, as far as I can make out, quite worthy sex life had caused us so much trouble and discord. Thus Janos, Dana and I were left behind in the room. We sat there for a while drinking beer and not saying much. Janos had collected himself from his in itself understandable but unnecessarily violent reaction (perhaps I’ll have to look after him better, I thought) and when we had looked at the figures for a while, a conversation developed of which, despite the short time which has elapsed since then, I can remember only the bare outlines.

  Dana: Oswald seemed astonishingly satisfied.

  Janos: He had good reason to. Thirty thousand sympathisers to build on. Not so dusty.

  Me: Do you think he’ll go on building on to them?

  Janos: I’m sure he will. He certainly hasn’t acquired those uniforms and general’s teeth just for fun.

  Me: But the referendum was an overwhelming manifestation in favour of us, after all. He got three per cent of the votes. A defeat in an election can hardly be greater than that.

  Janos: And we got eighty per cent.

  Me: What do you mean?

  Janos: The fourteen per cent who voted for us we can’t rely on at all. The fact that they voted at all shows that they haven’t grasped the idea—or that they don’t sympathise with it, possibly with us personally. Consequently they might just as well have voted for Oswald. In practice, then, seventeen per cent of the people are not to be trusted. That’s not all that few. Just think, seventeen out of a hundred.

  Dana: I’m scared of Oswald.

  (She said this very suddenly.)

  Janos: You mean that you don’t trust him.

  Dana: No, I mean just what I said. I’m scared of him. I’m not usually scared, as you know, but I’ve seen people like him before, in different circumstances and a long way away from here.

  Me: But what is it he’s after?

  Dana: Power.

  Janos: But he’s got it. He’s got everything he could possibly want, from uniforms and medals to a
eroplanes and guns.

  Dana: Perhaps that’s not what he primarily wants—but simply power. In that case …

  Me: In that case what?

  Dana: In that case it is a matter of indifference to him whether he takes power by force over a barren desert or over an ideal society. The main thing is power in itself, as a phenomenon.

  Janos: Oswald has never been like that.

  Dana: Perhaps he wasn’t, but he may have become so. He lives alone, doesn’t he? The seeds to this are in everyone, but I think they grow more easily in someone who is alone. I know that. I live alone too.

  Me: No one can be very much alone here. They’re not meant to.

  (Naïve, I admit, but I said that.)

  Dana: I’ve been damned alone here, many a time.

  Janos: Perhaps Oswald is going mad. In that case we must help him. But I must say that Tadeusz annoys me more. His spinelessness has always irritated me and it’s got worse over the years.

  Dana: Tadeusz Haller is a second-tier person. He’s always been so, and he’ll always latch on to new opportunities in the vain hope that they will eventually carry him up to that top step which he’ll never reach. I don’t understand why you allied yourself with him in the first place.

  Me: There’s a lot you don’t understand. We’ve known Tadeusz for a long time. He’s intelligent and his fundamental attitude is right.

  Dana: I’ll agree that he’s gifted, but what for? And fundamental attitudes can be changed.

  (Where have I heard that before? Naturally, from myself, long ago.)

  Dana: And also, it’s not impossible that Oswald isn’t right on a number of points. There is perhaps a fundamental moral sense of belonging which one can stand outside of for a while—but not in the long run.

  Janos: What would that be?

  Dana: I don’t know. If I’d known that I wouldn’t be sitting here.

  We sat on for a while longer, chatting about this and that, the irritableness still there. Janos repeated several times that Oswald and Tade had had a set-back and that tomorrow they’d shrug their shoulders and then we’d soon all shrug our shoulders at this odd interlude and laugh at it. He also said that if Oswald wanted to be dictator then he only had to say so, then we could just fix it in some way. If he wanted to play Leader, why not? He ought to realise that himself, too, Janos said, still as if he wanted to convince himself at any price. ‘Ought to and ought to,’ said Dana. Suddenly she shuddered. (She has an unpleasant way of being oversensitive, as if her nerve-ends were outside her skin.)

  ‘I wish Ludolf were here,’ she said.

  I asked why, but she didn’t answer. Janos sat thinking for a while. Outside, it was absolutely deathly quiet and I felt as if we three were alone in the whole universe. (What peculiar things I do think up.)

  Then Janos said:

  ‘Ludolf, yes. We could send him a telegram, couldn’t we—if he’s sober enough to be able to read it?’

  We wrote it out together and Danica went over to the ’phone to ring it through. She clicked the cradle several times. Finally she said:

  ‘It’s dead.’

  ‘Send it on the telex then,’ said Janos, yawning. (He looked pointedly at me, as if I hadn’t known a long time ago that he wanted us to go to bed.)

  ‘That’s dead, too,’ said Dana, after a minute or two.

  ‘The hell it is,’ said Janos. ‘Has the whole damned tele-system collapsed? Oh, well, I’ll trot over to the tele-centre with it.’

  ‘No,’ said Dana. ‘I’ll go. I’m an old hand at night-wandering.’

  She took the telegram form and left. It was then five to two. When Janos and I were alone, he looked at the referendum figures and smiled. That was the first time that evening. Then we went up and looked in on the kids, who were asleep, and went on into our bedroom.

  We began to get undressed. I was standing naked in the middle of the floor and Janos was still in his shirt and trousers in the bathroom when the door was jerked open. Quite without any warning. It was Dana. She was panting and said:

  ‘The tele-centre is occupied by police troops. Oswald’s people. All external lines are closed. They’ve put an emplacement with sandbags and machine-guns outside the building. I only got away by the skin of my teeth, presumably only because none of the soldiers recognised me. An officer told me that I should go home and keep calm. Everything would be cleared up early tomorrow morning and then I could send my telegram. I ran back here.’

  ‘Did you see anything else?’

  ‘No, nothing. It was quiet and calm everywhere.’

  ‘What the hell?’ said Janos.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dana. ‘Exactly. What the hell?’

  I got my clothes on faster than Janos did, although he only had to pull on his socks, shoes and jacket. We went down to the ground floor. Janos put on his cap and opened the outer door. There were three soldiers on the steps. They had firearms in their hands. I had never seen any of them before. One of them saluted and said very courteously:

  ‘I must ask you not to leave the building. The whole block is surrounded. We have orders to shoot if you attempt to leave.’

  ‘What’s all this nonsense?’ said Janos, and he began walking down the steps.

  The soldier who had spoken raised his rifle and cocked it; the others did the same.

  ‘You’re putting me in an untenable position,’ he said. ‘You leave me no choice.’

  Janos stopped. I saw then that the soldier who had spoken had stars on his collar.

  ‘A state of emergency has been declared,’ said the soldier. ‘The Army has taken over responsibility for safety and that applies to everyone. As long as you stay indoors nothing will happen to you. If on the other hand …’

  Colonel Orbal: Who was that officer?

  Major von Peters: Lieutenant de Wilde, you must remember. He was demoted the next day. Killed at Ludolfsport.

  Colonel Orbal: Oh, was he? Good demeanour, nevertheless.

  Major von Peters: Too good.

  Lieutenant Brown: I shall continue … with the permission of the presidium.

  Finally we went back into the building and stood staring at each other. Janos mumbled over and over again: ‘A military coup … the most impossible of everything that’s impossible … the most distasteful … a military coup.’

  ‘Are there any weapons in this place?’ said Dana.

  ‘You know as well as I do that there aren’t,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing here except ourselves, the kids and their nurse.’

  ‘We must get away,’ said Janos.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dana. ‘But how?’

  Janos went over to the window and looked out. There were soldiers everywhere.

  ‘Has that idiot really enough men to manage this?’ he said.

  ‘Obviously,’ said Dana. ‘I’ve seen about forty uniformed men now. Here and at the tele centre. And I didn’t recognise a single one of them. Something has just passed us by.’

  ‘Yes, it certainly has,’ said Janos. ‘We’re casualties of one of our basic principles, limited supervision. And Ludolf …’

  ‘Will they take over the airport early tomorrow morning?’ I said.

  We looked at each other, but none of us was adjusted to the situation being hopeless or definitely catastrophic. If it had all suddenly turned out to be a gigantic practical joke, we wouldn’t have been especially surprised; anyhow, I wouldn’t.

  At exactly ten to three, someone in military boots came stumping up the stairs. There was a bang on the door and a voice shouted: ‘Military! Open up!’

  ‘It’s not locked,’ I called. (We didn’t usually lock up. I don’t even think there was a key.)

  The door was opened and a soldier came in. He had a machine-gun on a strap across his chest and a steel helmet on his head. We recognised him at once. It was Erwin Velder, Oswald’s private bloodhound.

  Captain Schmidt: That’s enough. You can stop there, Brown. The notes in the fragment do in fact cover several more pages, but it would be
perhaps of greater interest to hear Velder’s version of the course of events.

  Major von Peters: Frightfully interesting. So now we’ve got to listen to the same thing, which we already know about anyhow, all over again, have we?

  Colonel Pigafetta: That undeniably doesn’t sound particularly cheering.

  Captain Schmidt: Captain Endicott, have you prepared the accused and tried to persuade him to be brief?

  Major von Peters: ‘Tried to persuade him’ is delightful.

  Captain Endicott: Yes, as far as is possible.

  Major von Peters: ‘As far as is possible’ is delightful too. What the hell is this? A court martial or a nursery school?

  Captain Schmidt: And he knows where he’s to begin?

  Captain Endicott: I think so.

  Major von Peters: This eternal thinking is getting on my nerves. Push the swine forward now, Brown, so something gets done.

  Colonel Orbal: Exactly. Just get going.

  Captain Schmidt: Velder, will you describe what happened from fifty-five minutes past one onwards on the thirteenth of December.

  Colonel Orbal: That window idea was brilliant. Works excellently. Doesn’t it?