Outside Verdun

by Zweig, Arnold; Rintoul, Fiona;

  Sister Kläre wasn’t exactly overjoyed when asked for her room. But she nodded, went in first and turned a picture to the wall that was hanging above the bed. The crucifix at the head of the bed stayed where it was. The patient Kroysing could lie down. One of the gentleman could sit beside him, and the other would have to stand. The other, naturally, was Bertin, who had been phoned for in plenty of time and had just arrived from work, dog tired and still starving. But he was so intimidated by the presence of this high-ranking officer called Judge Advocate Posnanski that he initially said nothing at all, only stuttering out a shy request for bread and to be allowed to sit down. This too made a bad impression on Posnanski. This man who was of the same religion as him was lazy and greedy as a pig. He was a pathetic sight sitting there on the floor with his legs stretched out in front of him, shamelessly shovelling soup out of a large bowl and crumbling bread into it, all the while preventing more civilised people from smoking and getting comfortable. With his sticky-out ears and damaged front teeth, he was hardly an adornment to the Prussian army. Furthermore, in his excitement over this decisive meeting, Kroysing had laid so much weight on Bertin’s testimony when introducing him (‘…and this is my friend Bertin, who spoke to my brother the day before he died and will tell you what he learnt from him…’) that Dr Posnanski, never much good at remembering names, had completely failed to note this one. Lieutenant Kroysing, whom Posnanski had liked at once, began to speak, and the lawyer listened. The room was as white and narrow as a ship’s cabin, and as soon as the witness laid down his spoon it was also equally smoky. For Posnanski had put his cigar case on Sister Kläre’s bedside table for people to help themselves. Kroysing’s deep voice vibrated through the clouds of tobacco smoke. Posnanski asked questions, and Bertin listened. This was the story of Sergeant Kroysing and his brother, Lieutenant Kroysing, who had done battle with that dwarf Niggl in the dripstone caves and hideouts of Douaumont mountain, only to have the pesky little gremlin snatched away from him by the French attack, overhasty orders and thick fog. And now Bertin was smoking a stogie such as he hadn’t enjoyed since his wedding, and that wedding seemed to belong to another world beyond the River Acheron, the world of the living where his sweet and lovely wife was getting thinner and thinner because even gods and goddesses starved in those iron-hard times. How did those verses go that he’d read at university from the ancient Norse Edda about doom fulfilled? ‘I was snowed on with snow, and smitten with rain, And drenched with dew; long was I dead.’ Did that apply to Christoph Kroysing, Sergeant Süßmann or Paul Schanz? In any case, there he was squatting like a beggar on the floorboards of a strange woman’s bedroom, ready to fall asleep… The weariness of spring, the waxing moon, and the goods train on the siding at Vilosnes-East station growing longer…

  ‘Hm,’ grumbled Posnanski. ‘Our witness is asleep.’ Bertin really had sunk forward, arms round his knees supporting his head.

  ‘Please don’t wake him yet,’ said Kroysing. ‘He hasn’t got much to laugh about.’ And he quickly explained how and where he’d met Bertin, about the work he had to do, the injustices he’d suffered and his visits to Kroysing. It was a mean sort of life for a lawyer and a writer; no one liked to fall outside their caste.

  At the words ‘lawyer and writer’ Posnanski pricked up his ears like a startled hare. ‘Bertin?’ he repeated incredulously, almost in disgust. ‘Werner Bertin?’

  ‘Hush!’ whispered Kroysing, but the sleeping man had started up at the sound of his name as if he’d been kicked. ‘Yessir, Sergeant,’ he said, and then opening his eyes: ‘Oh, please excuse me… We were hauling wet crates of powder on our backs. There are still clumps of earth on my boots.’

  Posnanski was still looking at him in shock. ‘Did you write the Man called Hilner?’

  ‘How come you know it? It was banned.’

  ‘And Love at Last Sight?’

  ‘Well, what do you know!’ said Bertin, suddenly cheering up.

  ‘And The Chessboard: Twelve Stories?’

  ‘The judge advocate is the first person I’ve ever met who’s read that book.’

  Posnanski nodded. ‘Lawyers, stockbrokers and ladies: they read everything, you know.’

  Bertin laughed happily and said he’d thought the reading public was mainly school children and students. If that were the case, writers would starve, said Posnanski, and that must be avoided at all costs. ‘And now, my dear colleague, I’d like to hear your report. What happened to Sergeant Kroysing and what do you know about him?’

  When Bertin had finished silence hung in the room as heavily as the smoke. ‘Don’t get your hopes up,’ said Posnanski. ‘As a private individual I believe you and Herr Bertin implicitly. As a lawyer and judge, unfortunately I must alight on the flaw – if I may mix my metaphors – that the witness can only state what he heard from your brother, but who can prove that your brother described the situation accurately? That he didn’t embellish and see enemies who wanted to persecute him in a perfectly standard military order? Had Herr Niggl signed a confession but then convinced the court that you had forced him to sign in fear of his life, then we could have countered that objection and supported your brother’s subjective view with Herr Bertin’s testimony and statements from the Third Company, and thereby proved what we are convinced is true. Think about it,’ and he rose, agitated, and stomped the four paces from the window to the door and back again, hands behind his back, his bald pate thrust forwards. ‘We’re up against it. We have the truth, and it’s believable and convincing. You both strike me as entirely reliable witnesses who have described the incident accurately, and God knows the incident itself is as clear as Pythagoras’ theorem. But to prove what you say to a reluctant court of the accused’s officers and peers: that’s another matter entirely.’

  Kroysing sat up in bed, letting his bandaged leg hang down, which he was not supposed to do. ‘So is the whole business going to come to nothing? Bloody hell!’ he almost spat. ‘What’s the point of society supporting lawyers, then?’

  Posnanski leapt to his profession’s defence. ‘It’s definitely worth society’s while supporting lawyers and supporting them – as you insinuate – rather comfortably. But let’s not fight, Lieutenant. Let’s try to work this through because compromise is the best lawyer. Give me the file from the preliminary enquiry. I’ll send for the papers and look into the case. In the meantime, think about whether you want to bring a complaint against Niggl and his accomplices for abuse of military authority resulting in a man’s death. Eat well, sleep well, get well and recover your spirits, and then write and tell me your decision. If you want to fight for justice, then do so, and I’ll help you and so will this young gentleman, though he will be taking the biggest risk of all of us. But it won’t be an easy battle. If you cannot prove your case, you’ll be in a terrible position and the stain of it will stay with you for the rest of your life. Right, now get me the file.’

  Kroysing raised himself up, his good foot in a slipper, his wounded leg bandaged up to the knee, his torso slung between the crutches from the padded supports under his armpits (to Bertin, it was a pitiful sight – Eberhard Kroysing on crutches!) and left the room.

  ‘Now as regards yourself,’ said Posnanski in a businesslike tone. ‘You obviously can’t stay where you are. Are you fit for active service?’

  ‘No, I was declared unfit long ago on account of my eyes and my heart,’ said Bertin.

  ‘Good. I’m having to give up my clerk. I shall ask for you.’

  Bertin sat there wide-eyed in his overcoat and scarf, his worn cap beside him. ‘But,’ he stuttered, ‘my training, my situation… I struggled to understand your exposition of the case earlier.’

  ‘My good man,’ cried Posnanski, ‘say yes and be quick about it. You don’t get a chance like this every day. Can you type? No. You’ll learn in two weeks. Give me your unit’s address. And then this evening won’t have been a complete waste of time.’

  And as Bertin was still staring at him in confusion �
�� could something so incredible happen so easily? (He’s been driven demented, thought Posnanski compassionately) – he added: ‘But please don’t mention this to anyone or it’ll go wrong, as we superstitious types know. How much leave do you get at the moment?’

  ‘Four days,’ replied Bertin, touching the floor. Still made of deal floorboards, so he wasn’t dreaming. ‘As a thank you, sir,’ he said falteringly, ‘may I offer you a report about my meeting with young Kroysing? It’s actually written as novel,’ he added almost guiltily. ‘That’s to say, it’s going to be a novel – the only thing I’ve written since I’ve been a soldier. If you would like to keep these few pages here..’

  Posnanski extended a grateful hand. ‘I won’t keep it. No gifts, my dear man. But I’ll definitely read it.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Sister Kläre

  THERE WAS A knock. Sister Kläre appeared in front of Kroysing, but recoiled in mock horror, crying in Russian, ‘My God’ (Bozhe moy), then asked in her Rhenish accent if there was actually anyone there as it was impossible to see. She yanked the window open and flung the tarboard shutters wide.

  ‘Turn the light out, toad face, if you want to see the view,’ growled a deep, angry voice. And Kroysing turned the switch.

  ‘You’re not in Douaumont now,’ said Sister Kläre sharply. ‘The French airmen have got better things to do than to mess about here.’

  ‘If only she weren’t so pretty,’ said Kroysing apologetically to the others.

  The landscape beyond the small window was bathed in the soft glow of twilight. From the ridge, the hospital overlooked the valley, which was shrouded in the spring night: the half-risen moon, mysterious stars glittering in the haze and the winding Meuse, glowing faintly between its dark sloping banks with their flecks of light. Only a faint flicker and rumble betrayed the existence of the front. The four of them crowded round the window and hungrily breathed in the pure air of approaching spring. The Meuse was still spectacularly frozen, but the warm breeze was unmistakably from the south. Sister Kläre folded her hands. ‘If only people weren’t so insane,’ she sighed. ‘I always have to remind myself that it’s not the Mosel, somewhere behind Trier. Why can’t the enemy just give in? Then we’d all be home by Easter and we could start to forget the war.’

  ‘Better not,’ said Bertin, then seeing Sister Kläre’s wide eyes: ‘Forget, I mean. People forget much too quickly.’ He stopped talking, realising he wouldn’t find the right words.

  ‘No, no,’ joked Posnanski, ‘we won’t forget this one. We’ll dress it up in patriotic colours and nice little rosy cheeks for future generations.’

  ‘I’ll be interested to see how you’re going to manage that,’ blinked Kroysing. ‘But beforehand, let me share my humble experiences with you. In the spring of 1915, on the Flanders front, we were facing the British and were pretty close to them when we installed our gas canisters – we had the honour of being the first gas company. From February to April we slept cosied up to those large iron canisters. One time one of them leaked, and I saw the damage in the morning in the shape of 45 sappers, dead and blue. And when we did a test explosion with the bloody things on the drill ground and carried the pieces home, every man who’d touched them entered the hereafter too. They died slowly. When I was in the hospital at Jülich with my first wound I met some of them. They died off, and no one really knew why. The doctors were very upset about it, but, hey ho, they still died. End of the line, alight here. Anyway, there we were waiting in our waterlogged trenches for a favourable wind. We kept having to relocate the canisters because they kept getting stuck in the clay. There were no gas masks back then. We were supposed to protect ourselves from the bloody stuff by shoving cotton wool in our noses. The Tommies kept throwing over cheery little notes, asking if the big stink was ever going to start. They were bursting with curiosity, they wrote. And then finally an east wind came, and we blew our gas over and the Tommies were curious no more. Their trenches were full of blue-black corpses when we walked through them. Blue and black, Tommies and Frenchmen, lying peacefully side by side. There were at least 5,000 dead on the Poelkapelle cycle track, and the lucky ones, who’d only got a bit of the stuff and were still choking and spitting, they expired in Jülich, without ceremony, slowly, one by one. Well, it was an unpleasant episode, best buried as quickly as possible. We’ll revisit it next time, when the only ammunition will be gas.’

  ‘You’re horrible, Kroysing,’ said Sister Kläre. ‘You always have to spoil everything. Haven’t I got enough on my plate looking after your filthy wounds? Can’t I spend five minutes soothing my soul with God’s creation without one of you butting in? The next war! There won’t be another war! If anyone threatens to go to war again after this massacre, our womenfolk will beat them to death with their brooms.’

  ‘Let’s hope so, sister,’ said Posnanski with conviction.

  ‘There won’t be another war,’ said Bertin, nodding. ‘This is the last one. Our rulers can fight the next one on their own. We men won’t be there.’

  ‘Quite right!’ cried Sister Kläre, wiping away a tear with the back of her index finger. She had been thinking of her husband, Colonel Schwersenz, a once proficient staff officer who had been sinking ever deeper into depression since the winter of 1914 and was now being cared for by her mother, the elderly Frau Pidderit, in a small hunting lodge in Hinterstein valley in the Bavarian Allgäu. Only the medical officer knew Sister Kläre’s story and real name. She was generally thought to be the plucky wife of a captain somewhere on the Eastern front, and there were whispered rumours about a flirtation with a very high-ranking personage.

  Kroysing, towering above them all, his mouth set in a sarcastic line, shrugged his shoulders: ‘Then we have the honour of living through the funeral of the last war. It didn’t really have a very long career, war – a mere 5,000 years. It was born in the time of the Assyrians and ancient Egyptians, and we’re putting it in its coffin. The world has been waiting for us. The people who ran the Thirty Years’ War, the Seven Years’ War and the Napoleonic Wars didn’t know what they were doing. We folks from the 1914 war are the ones to sort it out – we of all people.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Sister Kläre and Bertin in defiant unison. However, Bertin couldn’t help but see a grave and them all as grave diggers standing round it, spades in hand: Kroysing, the nurse, the fat judge advocate, and he himself, outlined against the cloudy sky, hacking at clods of earth. Below them bulged a bloated belly and a plump, hairless face with a grin across its chubby cheeks beneath its closed eyes – perhaps portentous, perhaps a sign of contentment at its own demise.

  Meanwhile, Sister Kläre closed first the shutters then the window. ‘Now put the light on and then you can go,’ she said.

  They all blinked as the light bounced off the walls. ‘We’d all like to thank you for your kind hospitality,’ said Judge Advocate Posnanski, bowing over Sister Kläre’s long, strong hand, calloused by work. A strand of ash blonde hair escaped from her nun-like head covering. Beneath it shone her beautifully set eyes. Her alluring, tender lips were obdurately closed. Hell of a lovely little thing with her Madonna face and pert lips, thought Kroysing. Very likely she did have a thing with the crown prince. He felt the need to improve his standing with her. ‘What would I get, sister—’

  ‘You’d get nothing,’ she interrupted, eyes flashing. ‘You’d get a punch on the nose.’

  ‘—if I dished up something extra nice for you? Allow me to introduce you to my friend Werner Bertin…’ – Sister Kläre stopped in the middle of the room, her lips slightly parted and her hands outstretched as if to push him away – ‘… author of the much-read novel Love at Last Sight.’

  Sister Kläre’s trained eyes took in Bertin’s grey-brown face, drawn cheeks, bristly chin, the rim of slack, dirty skin above his worn and muddy lice-infested collar. When he laughed in embarrassment, she saw he had a gap in his teeth and a broken front tooth and that he was going bald on top. And yet there was something a
bout his eyebrows, his forehead, his hands, which suggested that Kroysing wasn’t joking. This man had written that tender love story! ‘It’s you,’ she said quietly, offering him her hand. ‘I can’t believe it. And my friend Annemarie in Krefeld wrote to me three months ago to say that she had met the author and he was a Hussar lieutenant and a charming man.’

  Bertin laughed in disgust at this, and Posnanski and Kroysing laughed at his disgust, and they all left Sister Kläre’s nun’s cell like a cheerful party breaking up. Now she could sleep in the room again, she said, adding that Bertin should visit her the next day when she would be off duty.

  ‘Well be in touch,’ said Posnanski, bringing the memorable meeting to a close.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Counterproposal

  THE BLACKBIRDS WERE singing as Judge Advocate Posnanski got out of his car at Montfaucon castle. After some thought, he had decided to let the package with Private Pahl’s shoes in it disappear without trace so as not to complicate his request for Private Bertin to be transferred to the Lychow division court martial of the Eastern Group. But he could have spared himself these reflections. Sometimes documents such as his request took weeks to arrive, other times only days. This one was passed very quickly from the Western to the Eastern Group, where it was eyed suspiciously in the ADC’s office and a query scrawled across it in blue pencil: was ASC battalion X/20 in a position to give up any of its men? That meant: kindly say that you are not in a position to do so. As well as the usual hostilities, the transfer of the Lychow division to the Russian front played a decisive role in this. The rivalry between the fronts was gathering momentum. The new Supreme Command had not been able to change this, and the two staffs rejoiced – General Schieffenzahn’s word – only in each other’s setbacks.