The Constant Soldier

by William Ryan

  He took another three steps and, now that he was close enough and the sun was beginning to shine on the very top of the other side of the valley, he saw why they weren’t answering. They weren’t asleep, that was for certain, but what was worse – he recognized them.

  ‘Go and fetch Obersturmführer Neumann, Fischer.’

  §

  Neumann leant down to look in at the bodies. Brandt could make out his father’s beige waistcoat – stained dark red in places, thanks to Adamik’s blood. Neumann’s skin was pale, almost blue – his cheeks unshaven.

  ‘What is that? On their chests? Can you see?’

  Brandt pushed a branch sideways to get a better look. It was for show, however. He knew what the small nuggets that were, scattered over the men, glinting in the weak light.

  ‘They’re teeth. Gold teeth. And fillings.’

  He heard Neumann swallow. A loud noise. Neumann stunk of last night’s alcohol and Brandt wondered if he might be sick. It took Neumann a little while to gather himself.

  ‘I don’t remember them having gold teeth,’ he said eventually. ‘Not that many, anyway.’

  ‘I think the guards must have collected them . . .’ Brandt paused, choosing his next words carefully. ‘From elsewhere. Perhaps that’s why they were killed.’

  He thought about this, wondering if he’d been responsible. Then he discounted the possibility. They were SS. The partisans would have killed them anyway.

  ‘A message, then? Is that why they were left on the body, do you think? Is this something to do with your friend Lensky?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  It seemed the safest answer. What was more, it was true. He had no idea why the killers had gone to this effort. What purpose could it serve? Neumann grunted as he stood to his feet. He ran a hand back through his hair, then picked up a long branch, poking at the twinkling teeth scattered on the dead men’s chests.

  ‘What do you think happened to the prisoners they were escorting?’

  Brandt could almost hear Neumann’s mind working it through.

  ‘I don’t know, Herr Obersturmführer. With the partisans who did this, I should think. Does it matter? They’re either dead or alive – there’s not much we can do about either.’

  Neumann stood and looked up into the forest that rose above the hut, squinting his eyes even though the sun hadn’t managed to crest the hill as yet. Perhaps he was looking for partisans.

  ‘I wonder how the bodies got here,’ he said. ‘The boys in the gatehouse saw nothing, you say?’

  ‘No, but they are children, not sentries. The partisans would have been quiet.’

  ‘Weber saw the guards at the checkpoint – the one at the far end of the reservoir – he mentioned it last night. The one you closed down. The killers must have brought them from at least that far away, if not further.’

  ‘I don’t understand it, Herr Obersturmführer.’

  ‘Do you think they might be up there, watching us?’

  ‘The partisans? Perhaps. They won’t come down – our men are on the reservoir road now.’

  Brandt pointed down the laneways at the ragged column of soldiers and civilians that was making its way as quickly as it could towards the pass. Scores of people were taking their chances and crossing the frozen reservoir. The soldiers on the dam were allowing wagons to cross now but movement was slow. There was nowhere for the wagons to go – the road on the other side was solid with traffic.

  ‘The Russians are on the outskirts of the town. It won’t be long before they break through.’

  ‘And the dam?’

  ‘Our engineers will blow it soon enough. When they do the water will slow the Russians down, if not send them a different way.’

  ‘What about across the ice?’

  ‘If the dam goes, the reservoir will go, ice and all. That’s what they told me yesterday, anyway.’

  Neumann shrugged, as if he’d expected nothing less.

  ‘Best not to get caught on this side of the dam, then, I should think.’ He nudged one of the dead men’s legs with his foot – drawing attention to the worn trousers the corpse was wearing.

  ‘Where do you think they got the civilian clothes, Brandt?’

  There was a note of false innocence to Neumann’s question. Brandt pretended to examine them, leaning down to avoid Neumann’s gaze while he worked out what to say. He reached forward to touch the fabric. It was stiff with cold.

  ‘Would you have any suggestions?’

  Brandt stood up and shrugged.

  ‘They must have broken into one of the houses. There’s been looting in the village – perhaps they broke in when they went down to bury Bobrik and the others.’

  They gazed at each other – Brandt determined not to blink. After what felt like half a lifetime, Neumann gave him a slow smile. There was something complicit it in and Brandt wondered what the SS man meant by it.

  ‘That must be it. There’s no other possibility, I’m sure. I’m going inside.’

  ‘And the bodies?’

  ‘We shouldn’t leave them here – bring them in.’

  Neumann turned to walk back up the lane but then he stopped and turned.

  ‘You’d better wake the mayor. He’s likely to react badly to this, I should imagine, and that may have consequences for you and your childhood friend in the bunker.’

  Brandt wondered if he should reply and decided it was best not to. Instead, he kneeled down and pulled at one of the legs. It was hard to shift the dead weight of a body across the icy ground but he managed to get the first of them out from under the tree without too much difficulty. As it slid away from the others, Adamik’s head fell to one side, revealing his open mouth. His angelic smile was no more. All his teeth had been broken, down to their roots, the chipped remnants a gory half circle – white splinters embedded in the dead man’s blackened tongue.

  They would bring the Ukrainians in but someone else could bury them. The most important thing was getting the boys ready to go. And getting the remaining prisoners out of the bunker.

  89

  SHE THOUGHT she was awake – but it was only in her dream that she sat looking up at the pale square of blue sky. The window that she saw there was cracked, and streaked with rain-crusted dirt. Yet despite this the blue of the sky was clean and pure. High up above her, dissecting the square, a white vapour trail disintegrated slowly. She watched, fascinated. She couldn’t understand why Rachel was asking her to wake up, pushing at her shoulder.

  ‘Good morning.’

  A man’s voice, speaking Polish. A rush of consciousness. The cold air on her face, the muggy smell of the other women’s bodies from under the shared blankets. The stiffness in her neck from where her head had fallen forwards. She opened her eyes. Two men were standing inside the room, looking down at them.

  She couldn’t see the taller one’s face. The window was behind him so his features were in shadow – but she could see the machine gun he carried, its stock nestling under his armpit, the barrel pointing at the ground. It must have been him who had spoken. He was the leader between the two of them. They wore red arm-bands.

  ‘You have nothing to fear,’ Joanna said, in German. She must be translating.

  ‘Is German preferable?’ the Pole said.

  ‘More of us speak German,’ Agneta answered carefully. She thought about standing up, but she felt safer here, under the blanket, the other women’s warmth close around her.

  ‘You’re from the SS hut. Prisoners, yes?’

  It wasn’t a question – the man knew. Perhaps he understood that she couldn’t see him because he moved to one side, turning his head slightly so that some of the light fell on his face. He was younger than she’d thought.

  ‘Don’t worry. You’re safe with us. We’ll look after you.’

  Agneta realized that she, in his eyes, was a German. Even though she might have spent the last five years behind barbed-wire fences, she and the others still bore some burden for the crimes committed by
their countrymen.

  ‘I’m not German,’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘They took my country from me.’

  He looked down at her, unsmiling.

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘What do you want with us?’ she asked.

  ‘We need to move you. One of our men was captured last night. He knows you are here. He may talk.’

  He must have taken her blank look as some kind of misunderstanding.

  ‘He may be forced to talk.’

  90

  NEUMANN STOOD in his office. The table was bare, the filing cabinets were empty. The phone wasn’t working. There was no electricity. And now the valley echoed with gunfire.

  Neumann considered Brandt. Had he helped the women prisoners escape? Maybe. He didn’t think he’d been behind the ambush or the death of the Ukrainians – but perhaps he had helped them plan their desertion. Lensky might have provided the papers. If he were to make a guess, Brandt had bargained with them for the prisoners. All his little kindnesses. Peichl must have been right about him, after all. He must have some decency left in him.

  Wolf paced back and forth, his ears flat against his head. Every now and then the dog made a sound somewhere between a bark and a moan and looked at Neumann with pleading eyes. Neumann tried to reassure him with a smile but when he moved to stroke him, the dog padded away to a far corner and curled up there – watching him.

  Anyway, what did it matter if Brandt had helped the women escape? It certainly didn’t matter to Neumann. It was as Brandt had said; those that were dead now were dead and those that lived, lived – there was not much he could do about either. Perhaps, Neumann considered, everything had been predestined – the world and history one enormous machine that had whirred onwards towards this moment. Each person who had lived up until this point had been an infinitesimal, fated cog running in its settled pattern until it was time for it to be replaced by another. All part of the machine, all destined to their fate. He, certainly, had always followed the path set out for him, without much thought. And it had led him here. If Brandt had chosen to find himself a different path, wasn’t that to be admired?

  Over at the dam, he could see soldiers carrying more wooden boxes from an army truck, taking them down inside the structure. He imagined the ice and water from the frozen reservoir cascading down the valley. It would be a sight to see, he thought with some regret.

  He took the record from the bookcase where he’d kept it. He walked through to the drinks cabinet in the entrance hall and helped himself to a brandy. Then he wound the gramophone player up. He placed Jäger’s record on the turntable. Mendelssohn.

  He stood for a moment and closed his eyes, listening to the music and remembering, as if it were yesterday, that summer afternoon from long ago. How things had been in his father’s house – before the first war, before Verdun, before all of this. He could hear Clara’s laughter and the scent of dead roses filled his nostrils. He could feel the summer heat pushing its way in through the open doorway. So many lives had been open to him then – so many paths and opportunities that he’d spurned – all to end up here. He remembered Marguerite, the first time he’d met her. How she had smiled down at their oldest boy when he had been born. The happiness he’d felt. He drank down the brandy. It was early in the day, but this was not an ordinary day. He picked up the half-empty bottle.

  He left the door to his office open so he could hear the music, removed his pistol from its holster and placed it on the table’s surface. He could hear the sporadic rumble and popping of the fighting as it moved closer. It had come so quickly, in the end. He had thought there would be more time.

  Neumann looked at the pistol – such a small thing, really. If you didn’t know what it was for – if you came from the past – you might have no idea. You might admire it as an object, if you didn’t know what it could do. He ran his finger over the rough texture of its grip, along the straight smoothness of its barrel.

  He remembered a drunken dinner over the summer – in the very early hours of the morning, sitting with two of the doctors, away from the more general conversation. Poison, they’d agreed, was a dirty business and hanging took too long and wasn’t certain. Shooting was best. The side of the head was unreliable, the doctor with the gapped teeth and the dark complexion had said – his blue eyes moist. The danger came from a reflexive turning away from the bullet – survival became a distinct possibility. The tall doctor with the thinning blonde hair and the cherubic cheeks had agreed – the mouth was far more reliable. The barrel placed right inside, so that the sight pushed against the top of your mouth and the barrel lay along your tongue. Infallible, the doctors had agreed, and once the trigger was pressed – there could be no pain. Death would be instantaneous. The cleanest method, beyond doubt, from a clinical point of view, was a bullet fired into the mouth.

  He’d known then, when the doctors had taken to discussing methods of inflicting death upon themselves instead of others, that events had come full circle. He’d known long before, of course, that things must come to this – but here was the final confirmation. And he had listened to them, and agreed – and determined to do as they advised.

  He filled his glass once more and drank it down in one go, coughing as the alcohol burned. He picked up the gun and pushed the muzzle inside his mouth – it tasted of gun oil and metal.

  Outside, in the hut, underneath the sound of the music, he heard the front door opening – a long squeal. He didn’t want to be interrupted – but he had some time. He closed his eyes. The memories that came to him now, as he’d known they would, were from the train. He remembered the old man. He could smell the blood, the rot and excrement from the wagons. He could hear the screams. He knew if he opened his eyes once again he would see the man standing there in front of his desk, regarding him expectantly. He mustn’t disappoint him.

  He listened to the music, breathed in the scent of dead roses once again, heard Clara’s laughter and the scream of bayoneted children – and pressed the trigger.

  91

  THE VALLEY, usually so quiet, now reverberated with the sounds of artillery. A young partisan, a red armband pinching the sleeve of his worn brown overcoat, led them along a path through the forest. They had been given similar armbands and Agneta didn’t like them – she felt they marked them out. But then so did their prison uniforms and their short-cropped hair.

  ‘Where are you taking us?’ Joanna asked him.

  The boy turned to them – he looked as though he were going to a football match. He carried a large revolver that he switched from hand to hand as he walked. Agneta wondered if it was heavy for him.

  ‘One of the higher meadows – not far now. You’ll be out of the way of things there.’

  A flight of aeroplanes flew overhead so low they could feel the wind from their passing. The sounds of explosions and cannon fire followed soon afterwards from the direction they had flown in. The boy stopped to look up at the sky, as if he could tell from the empty space the planes had left behind what was happening elsewhere.

  ‘They’re giving the Germans hell,’ he said. ‘It will all be over soon.’

  He laughed and Agneta understood. It was terrifying – yes – but after years of terror, that didn’t seem to matter so much. The prospect of change was the exhilarating thing.

  And they, the women, had survived – even if the fear she had suppressed for so long made her want to lie down and never get up again. But their survival had been due to Brandt and he was down in the valley. Yet she hadn’t even thanked him, and she had things she had yet to say to him.

  When they reached the edge of the forest, the boy motioned them to stay back while he went ahead. They stood in a rough circle, looking at the ground rather than each other. She noticed they were all leaning forward, almost crouching. The noise of the guns, even though not close, was unsettling. It was instinctive to want to make oneself smaller – less of a target. None of them spoke.

  ‘Come, come.’ The boy was back. ‘Quickly,’
he said as he led them out of the trees, towards a small farmhouse that stood some forty metres distant. Their clogs dragged through the snow and she felt herself out of breath and not from the running. It was the thought that Brandt might, even now, be dead. And she hadn’t spoken to him.

  Just as they reached the house there came the sound of crashing trees and rolling metal. A white tank, bedecked with infantry in camouflage overalls, poked its nose out of the forest on the other side of the field. There was Cyrillic writing on its turret – ‘To Berlin’.

  ‘The Russians,’ the boy said, laughing. ‘They came through the forest.’

  The infantry spilled off the tank and out onto the long field, and when the tank rolled forward others followed, lining up on either side of it, disgorging more soldiers who raced ahead, as if creating a protective screen around the tanks. It was only moments before a group approached them, shouting in Russian at the boy – who called back, pointing to his armband and then to the women, explaining them perhaps. One of the soldiers ran back to the tanks and returned with a tank officer, his uniform shining with ingrained dirt but his face pink as a pig’s bottom. A good-looking man, who smiled at them. Another tanker followed and she had to look twice – a woman – and there was another man in civilian clothing, also with a red armband.

  The first tanker carried a map, which he showed to the boy, who began to talk quickly – the older Pole who had accompanied the tankers joining in.

  Agneta turned to the others and found that they were sitting on the low wall in front of the house, their heads in their hands. She could hear the sounds of their sobbing. Yet, while the other women had been overwhelmed by emotion, she felt nothing – no relief, no exultation, only concern for the things she hadn’t said to Brandt. The female tanker came towards her, pointing at Agneta’s shaved head, then at the other women.