by Tony Klinger
Helmut squared up to face me, “Yes it is, and I’m proud to volunteer to defend the fatherland. I know you would do the same if you were able.”
“Bravo!” said Kathrin, “Shut up both of you, don’t you understand, my friend here is a lousy painter but he’s an even worse fighter, he is going to get killed and to achieve what?
Helmut stood his ground, and Kathrin started to eat some nougat from the bag of snacks she carried with her in case of emergencies, she always ate in the face of conflict. “It would be better to live for your country rather than die for it, enough fools are doing that already.”
Helmut smiled as if he was invulnerable, “ I will come back, I promise.” He squeezed my shoulder, “How will I run the business without you?” He was already walking away, down the path and out of our lives, he stopped at his car, before he got in, and “The business runs itself these days. Get one of your three hundred staff to be the butt of your bloody stupid jokes until I get back!”
He stood by the door of his car and I could see that there was no point in arguing with him; his mind was made up, “Promise me you’ll come back you big idiot.” I said, as if he could really keep that oath. “I can’t shake your hand so.” he hugged me in a masculine but spontaneous gesture. “Our lives are more like a melodrama every day.” I said, “The world is falling apart, and there are no neat patterns or happy endings any more.”
With that he got into the car and started the engine. “Don’t get yourself shot.” I called to him as he put the car in gear, “I will try not to, and look after that new wife of yours, she’s all right.” I returned his smile, “Better than that, she’s also rich and happy!” He drove down the driveway, waving to me out of his window. I spoke to myself now; he was too far away to hear, “Promise me you’ll come back old friend.” I turned back to my home and Kathrin.
Chapter Eighteen
Stalingrad, The Russian Front
January 1, 1943
Tremendous bursts of gunfire sent showers of earth into the air around me as the Soviet fired their shells screaming at us. Our soldiers from the once proud 6th army were no longer recognizable as human beings. They ran from hole to hole in the wreck of the city. They had now been fighting for nearly four months to try and take this place, and it had become the great set piece battle of the war. It was rumored that there had already been more than two million casualties in this one battle, and there was still no winner or loser. Perhaps that was the message of this war; there are no winners. I looked around the wreckage, the buildings were truncated husks and the men darting between them shadow glove puppets dancing for their lives between the bullets of the snipers. I had come to the conclusion that I was both invisible and invulnerable. No bullet yet made had my name on it. I could run through the charnel house without a scratch, my job being to record these momentous and stupid events for posterity on my canvases.
I was convinced that I could safely rest my easel on the small hill constituted by fallen masonry and the bodies of soldiers from both sides. There I sat painting, puffing on my cigarette whilst the world was coming to an end in the apocalypse enveloping me.
I was blissfully unaware that a Russian sniper was observing me in minute detail through his rifle site, and had decided that he liked my work and the crazy way I did it. He must have been watching me as I tried to paint with my mouth, recording the carnage all around me. Quietly and slowly he put down his gun and picked up his crossbow. He aimed it very carefully and smiled just before he pulled the trigger. Moments later the arrow lodged itself in the corner of my picture, inches from my face. Attached to it was a note, “Keep your head down,” it instructed me. I looked around for its source, but the shooter was too well camouflaged. I decided to keep my head well down. At least I had one fan on the other side!
I saw incredible and terrible things in those days in Stalingrad. No other battle could prepare you for what I saw. The number of bodies torn asunder, the dead unable to be buried in the hard unforgiving frozen ground, the snow, the cold, the unbearable cold that froze through your bones, it didn’t matter how you dressed, you could never get warm. The spent, twisted metal everywhere, as if a giant toddler had thrown a tank here, a tank there, discarded torn buildings and cars, bits of flesh that were once living, breathing people lay unclaimed, seemingly uncared for. It was hell, and still it went on, unrelenting. I painted in a frenzy, somehow if I painted these scenes they might never be repeated, surely if people saw this ultimate destruction amongst the acts of heroism, stupidity and bravery they would realize the futility of it all.
I didn’t notice the young soldier running in my direction across the scarred earthen landscape and then I spotted him only because the Russians opened up their small weapons in his direction as if he was a moving target at a fairground. I found myself cheering him on, along with other German soldiers who were witnessing his progress amongst the bullets whipping up the ground around his running feet. He ran, paused, sprinted, twisted and turned to thrown off the aim of those targeting him. Somehow he made it to my position unscathed; he saluted smartly, then stood, panting heavily as he looked at my painting with approval.
“Colonel Hessel?” he inquired with studied courtesy, “Yes,” I replied, whilst thinking there couldn’t be too many other colonels who were painting this scene at the front who were without the use of their arms. I couldn’t hear the next words of the young soldier because just then there was a juddering series of artillery shells exploding all around our position, one of which blew both of us onto the ground. He carefully replaced my now dirtied painting back onto the somewhat broken easel and then, satisfied, he pulled me back onto my feet. “What is it you want, you can see I’m busy,” I said, somewhat ungraciously. “General Paulus’ compliments Colonel, he wishes to invite you to return with me for dinner.” He said this with no trace of a smile of incongruity.
“I’m still too busy, can’t you just send him my apologies?” I only needed a little while longer and I would have finished my painting. “I’m sorry sir, but I am instructed to bring you back with me, I think we might shortly be withdrawing to a new position.” I looked from the boy soldier around the general mayhem, “But the Fuhrer says we are winning!”
His eyes followed mine as we both witnessed the white faces of the dead strewn all over the ground like discarded confetti from this wedding of death. The smoldering rubble clamors for the eye’s attention against the burnt out, once deadly machines of war which stand here and there as monuments to death in battle. “So, General Manstein is going to save us all?” I asked him. “Those are General Manstein’s men sir;” he said this whilst pointing to the dead bodies on the ground, “Come along sire, we must get going or we’ll be cut off.”
“No, you go, I want the world to see this through my eyes.” I told him. The soldier took a last lingering look at me, considered me mad and bade me farewell, “Good luck sir, I’ll tell the general you were unable to dine with him tonight.” He smiled and so did I, and then he ran off, the same way he came. I don’t know if he made it, but I hope he did, he had a wonderful smile.
The darkness closed in but I hardly noticed as my painting took an almost demented intensity. I didn’t even feel the terrible cold creeping into every pore of my body. To anyone who glimpsed me they must have thought I was a frozen statue.
Eventually the inevitable happened and the Russians surrounded me, approaching ever closer until I was ringed by them, their guns inches from my face. I didn’t move even when one of them prodded me with his bayonet. He barked a command that I thought must have meant, put your hands up. The one command I could do nothing about. Then a sergeant moved to the front of the crowd of bemused Soviet troops and said, in poor German, one syllable at a time, “Put, your, hands, up!” I told him in German, “I can’t move my arms.” But the phrase book he held didn’t contain that answer so he hit me around the head with his heavily gloved hand instead. I didn
’t move. Another soldier cocked his rifle, “I’ll shoot the stupid bastard.”
He placed his rifle muzzle in my mouth and prepared to fire. Before he could do so, another voice shouted, “Halt!” The soldier removed the gun from me and joined his colleagues as they turned to the Russian officer. He wore no insignia, but we could tell from the way he carried himself that he is accustomed to instant obedience. “We need information, we already have enough bodies!” He walked up to me, and studied my painting, “You paint well enough for a German with no arms.” He said in heavily accented German. I wasn’t sure whether his words were meant as a compliment to me, but leaving me alive was certainly to be encouraged, “Thank you, sir?” He understood that I was asking after his rank, “I am a political officer Colonel, I don’t carry rank. Bring him along.” He instructed the two guards who were perpetually at his side.
The soldiers roughly grabbed me from both sides and forced me to march behind their boss who first took my canvas before leading our little group away into the gathering darkness.
We arrived at a Russian bunker, which, from the mess everywhere was apparently a rapidly deserted German position. The place was concrete grey, damp and cold. The light flickered as if the thud of the heavy artillery affected its supply. More likely the intermittent effectiveness of the small generator I had seen on the way down had more to do with the dimness.
We sat on hard wooden chairs facing each other, the Russian officer and me. He smiled pleasantly, “We are not the same technically as your Gestapo. Apart from the politics I mean, that bit is obvious I think. No, we don’t bother with a good guy bad guy kind of routine. I do both, so for now you get the good guy, and then without warning I shall be the bad guy.” With that he casually walked over to me and hit me on the nose. I felt the blood trickle down my chin.
“I appreciate that so far you have been most co-operative, or that would have been much worse, maybe a kick in the balls, always good for an opener, or for the very annoying, some fingernails out with the pliers, well you get the idea don’t you?” “Yes, thank you, I get the idea.” I didn’t want to be hit again. “So the facts, you are Arnulf Hessel. Otherwise known as Arnie. We have established that you come from the town of Darmstadt in Germany. You are a painter and businessman by profession. You are a good painter, maybe even an outstanding painter. Did I tell you that already?”
“Are you going to release me?” I asked, “Do you mean ever?” he asked, seemingly quite reasonably. “I think we might, one day, but I suppose that would depend on your condition of release, there’s release alive, like you are, or there’s slightly damaged, or very much so, or there is dead. One way or another all things come to an end as you know. Tell me why I should let you go in your present condition?”
I looked around to see that there was no one else looking or listening, there was not, “I’m on your side, I am against the Nazis.” His face twisted as if tormented by this question, and he shook his head sadly, “I do have difficulty with that point. I hear what you’re saying I really do. But you would be surprised how many truly committed Nazis become Communists in this room just before they face the firing squad. Tell me why I should believe you, you are, as you have admitted, Hitler’s special pet artiste; and I can see why, you are very talented, and the crippled thing, only adds to the appeal. But how do I know you’re on our side, you’re going to have to prove it I’m afraid. Go on, convince me.”
“How could I convince you?” I pleaded, I knew how dangerous my position was, this man could shoot me and no one would ever know anything about my fate. “Well you should try very hard or you could be leaving here dead.” He laughed at his joke, I found myself doing the same, and this mystified him, “Why do you laugh when your life hangs in the balance?”
“Every side must have one of you.” I said, “What do you mean?” He asked more insistently, “I know your Nazi twin, his name is Ratwerller, we call him Rat, he did the same things to me, no he was worse, he also stole my wife!” I laughed again, “don’t you want to live?”
“What difference would it make?” he paused before answering, “None really, but I live to collect knowledge, that’s my reason for being, I exist to gather information for the collective. Tell me the story of this man Rat, and your supposed resistance activities.”
So we spoke, it must have been for hours, because even in the gloom of that dunk bunker streaks of light eventually seeped in and I realized that another dawn had come. “Your stories are simply ridiculous.” He concluded, after having told me many times that I had simply fabricated them to stay alive as long as I could. I was too tired to answer him. He looked at the notepad he had been meticulously writing my story on. “You will have to do much better. How can anyone verify any of these names, dates, times, places? You understand that I personally would love to see a man of your talent be released.”
“Oh, is this the good guy talking?” I asked him, he smiled. “Yes, but its true nonetheless, I would like to believe you comrade, but how can I know, really know that you’re not just another Nazi liar?
As he finished his question a huge brute of a man entered the bunker, he looked me over, as if measuring me for something. He looked over to the officer who nodded. The brute approached me as if he was running up to the start of an athletic event. Then, with all his might he started punching me, face stomach, face stomach, face stomach. I threw up what little food I had consumed, but still he didn’t stop. The officer shook his head, as if shocked by the violence, “Help me to stop this.” He pleaded to me, “What do you want from me?” I shouted, “The truth, tell me the truth!” he shouted back to me.
“For God’s sake, how many Nazi spies do you think they sent to bloody Stalingrad without the use of their arms?” he nodded, but didn’t display any humor, “You would be the first.”
I lost my temper, “Shoot me you bloody fool, I can’t stand to listen to your shit anymore!”
The Russian laughed and looked at his watch, “Perhaps some breakfast and a nice cup of tea, but first a little test of the electrics eh?” With that the brute whipped of my clothes as if I were a little boy. He dragged over what looked like a car battery from the side of the room where it had been covered by a piece of material. It had leads coming out of the device and I understood that this was going to be worse than the beating I had already taken.
“I thought you were the good guy.” I tried to say through my broken teeth, “And the bad guy,” he said, “But I told you the truth.” I insisted, “ We don’t trust many Germans around here, I can’t think why.” As he talked the other man attached the leads to my balls with little care for my comfort. “Is there anything I can say to stop this?” I asked, “I’m no hero, I have nothing to tell you.” With that he flicked the switch and I felt searing my pain tear through my groin and permeate every pore of my being. Just when I thought I would die, with my body in convulsive shock he broke the connection, “How was that, comfortable?” he asked, “Perhaps a little more juice?” He turned up the power and left it on a little longer, I was sure I would die, my heart must have nearly burst. “Tell me everything.” He said, “I have told you everything!” I said, forcing the words out of my mouth one at a time. He turned the current off again. I exhaled, the sweat pouring from me despite the freezing temperature.
“Perhaps its time for breakfast, but before we go.” He threw the switch again, and left the room while I writhed in agony, passing out from the agony. I don’t know how long I was unconscious but when I came to my tormentor was back in his chair eating his breakfast. He looked happy and refreshed. “Tuck in,” he said as his colleague solicitously fed me the promised breakfast. Between mouthfuls the Russian officer spoke as if we were old friends, “The battle goes well comrade. We are decimating the invincible German 6th army, chopping it into little pieces. What do you think of that; You Aryan super beings, beaten by us sub humans?”
“I don’t like killin
g, but I would make an exception of you.” He laughed, “You have big balls friend, big cooked balls!” he observed, “But we know you kill your enemies when you have to.”
“But I don’t like killing.” I insisted, “Even your daddy?” “What do you mean?” I asked, “Your mother sends her love.” “I don’t understand.” I said, “We can find out anything, we’re everywhere, you know that don’t you?”
“No I didn’t” He beamed at me, “Killing that bastard of a man was a patriotic act, why not admit it to me, this is not a Nazi court.”
“If you know so much then you must know that everything I’ve been telling you is true. What else do you want?”
He gathered up all his papers and fastidiously straightens them. Satisfied, he folds them twice and inserts the package into his greatcoat pocket.
“You must be tired Arnie, we’ve been talking almost non stop for two days. Have some rest. We shall talk again later. Now I have to go.”
The Russian walked out of the bunker before telling me if I was free, but the hulking guard with the gun told me that I wasn’t. I signaled to the man that I wanted to stand up and he nodded that this would be all right. As I did so waves of dizziness and nausea overcame me temporarily. I staggered over to the dirty mattress on the floor in the corner. I collapsed onto it and was almost instantly asleep.
I don’t know how long I slept. The next thing I remember was being the sound of gunfire. I opened my eyes and saw my sadistic brute of an interrogator being riddled by bullets fired by the machine guns of a ring of grinning German soldiers who were surrounding me. The leader was the young messenger I had met earlier, immediately prior to my capture. “I could kiss you.” I said to him as he smiled and pulled me to my feet, “I thought you boys would be half way back to Germany by now.” The young man dressed me hurriedly with the help of his fellow soldiers, “The General’s compliments sir, he said to tell you that if you don’t come for dinner this time he shall have to presume you’re snubbing him deliberately.”