Steiner, happening to glance back, noticed Zoll’s strange progress. He left Schnurrbart in the lead and stood still. Zoll was on the point of jumping over a broad strip of light when their eyes met. His intended jump became a halting step that carried him right into the middle of the sunlit band. Zoll’s glance shifted rapidly from Steiner’s immobile face to his foot, which still trod the same spot. I’m done for, he thought. He felt paralysed with terror. A few seconds passed while both men stood motionless. Finally Steiner asked: ‘What’s the idea?’ His cool voice brought Zoll to his senses. He raised his head slowly and stared into those unfriendly eyes. Steiner repeated his question: ‘What’s the idea?’ For the space of a few heartbeats Zoll fought the temptation to drop his ammunition boxes and fall upon Steiner with flailing ; fists. But Steiner had the tommy-gun crooked in his arm; only a motion and the barrel would be pointing at him. Slowly, with bowed head, Zoll walked by him, gradually increasing his pace.
When he had come level with Dorn, Steiner trotted past him and took the lead again. Zoll was still quivering with rage and disappointment. That skunk, he thought, that rotten skunk. He could hardly restrain his tears. While he automatically trudged ahead, he tried to adjust to the idea that he would be killed in the attack on the bridge. It gave him a certain amount of pleasure to imagine himself the centre of a dramatic event. Marching along behind Dorn in a haze of muddled thoughts, he began ransacking his mind for the memorable happenings of his twenty-five years. He felt like a man who is being compelled by financial reverses to part with precious belongings, and who examines each article in turn with love and pain. Suddenly Dorn stopped.
‘What’s the matter?’ Zoll asked, startled out of his sombre meditations. Then he saw the men clumped together on the right side of the road, watching Steiner cautiously negotiate what seemed to be a turn in the road. Steiner vanished for a moment, then reappeared and beckoned to them.
‘How does it look?’ Krüger asked.
‘We’re there,’ Steiner whispered. ‘It’s about a hundred yards to the bridge—and it’s guarded.’ The men exchanged anxious glances. ‘We’ll stick to the plan. Krüger sets up the machine-gun on the edge of the woods. Dorn, Dietz, Zoll and’—he hesitated for a moment, studying their faces—‘and Pasternack stay with Krüger and see that no one gets out of the windows. The doors are on the other side. The rest will come with me. Don’t fire until I start. Keep your heads behind the trees. If I see that we can’t silence them all, I’ll send up a flare. That’s the sign for everyone to dash across the bridge as far as he can run. If the worst comes to the worst, we’ll set fire to the houses over their heads. Let’s go.’ He crossed the road and started into the bushes. They moved forward; very slowly, crawling most of the way. After a while the underbrush thinned out, but it still offered some cover.
When they topped a small rise in the ground, they saw the buildings in front them: three one-storey houses made of massive logs, all on the right side of the road. Above the slate roofs rose two chimneys from which dark smoke mounted into the cloudless sky. The creek flowed parallel to the row of houses; here, too, its banks were overgrown with shoulder-high reeds which swayed gently in the wind. The bridge was close by the first house, a primitive but wide wooden bridge with rails on both sides. In the centre, leaning against the narrow slats of the railing, stood the guard—an elderly man with a yellow, wrinkled face. His cap was pushed back on his head and he was staring dully at the dirty surface of the water. His tommy-gun was slung diagonally across his back.
For a while the men lay motionless. Then Schnurrbart crawled over to Steiner and whispered: ‘Funny business. I don’t like this silence.’ He glanced at the three wagons which stood near the long side of the middle house, their contents concealed under dark-brown canvas. ‘Funny business,’ he repeated suspiciously.
Steiner glanced irritably at him. ‘What’s funny about it? The rest of them are still snoozing. We’ll wake them up soon enough.’
‘I don’t know,’ Schnurrbart murmured. ‘There’s something in the air.’ He paused a moment. ‘The house on the right seems empty; the chimney isn’t smoking and the shutters are closed.’
What mattered now was to determine where the horses were. The horses could not be inside the buildings, nor behind them. If they had been stabled elsewhere, there must be a guard with them. He had not thought of that before. If the man guarding the horses succeeded in escaping, there would be the devil to pay. As long as their presence behind the Russian lines was unknown, it was not half as bad. Once the Russians found out, there’d be hundreds of men beating the bushes for them. But how could he track down the horses. Searching at random through the woods would be dangerous and time-consuming. They would just have to take the risk.
He looked again at the Russian guard, who had not changed his position. Then he turned his head slightly and whispered: ‘Get ready!’ A suppressed moan arose from the men. They stared fixedly at the bridge.
A few yards behind Steiner lay Dorn, his chin propped on his left forearm and his eyes narrowed to slits. For the past few minutes he had been afflicted with a torpor that smothered all feeling. He saw Steiner lifting the tommy-gun and then he threw a rapid glance at Dietz, who lay beside him and suddenly began to shake violently. The boy’s teeth chattered audibly. Dorn felt tempted to close his eyes, press his face into the damp moss and just lie still, ignoring whatever happened. But instead he touched Dietz’s arm reassuringly. As if through a curtain he saw Steiner sighting upon the man on the bridge. He tried to think of his wife. But each time he had almost summoned up her face, the outlines of it grew vague, like smoke rings dissolving in a sudden draught He gave up trying. Then he suddenly recalled what Professor Stahl had said to him in parting: ‘You have been an excellent teacher; I hope you will be just as good a soldier. But you must go into it without illusions.’
Dorn smiled bitterly. With a curious sense of remoteness he saw the barrel of Steiner’s tommy-gun jerk a little higher. The whipping round of shots reached his ear without arousing in him the usual sense of horror. The man on the bridge started to move as though he were standing upon a whirling disc. Then his hands gripped the wooden railing for support, his legs sagged as though the sinews had been slashed, and he slid, knees first, underneath the railing and into the dirty water, which reached up to the stringers of the bridge. At the same moment the machine-gun began to chatter. Steiner leaped to his feet and raced with giant strides toward the bridge. Close behind him ran Schnurrbart and the others. When they reached the bridge, they threw themselves on the ground and immediately began firing at the doors of the huts, until Steiner changed his magazine and cried out: ‘Stop!’ There was a sudden stillness. Krüger, too, had stopped firing. The men looked around questioningly. Several minutes passed. Nothing stirred inside the houses. Steiner muttered: ‘What do you make of that?’ Schnurrbart shook his head in bewilderment.
Cursing under his breath, Steiner straightened up somewhat and stared blackly at the silent houses. ‘I thought there was something fishy from the start,’ Schnurrbart declared. Suspiciously, he regarded the silent woods across the bridge. Then he turned to Steiner again: ‘What are we going to do?’
Steiner did not answer for a moment. Had a single shot been fired from the houses, his next steps would have followed automatically. But this uncanny silence put him in a cold sweat. He glanced down at his hands and saw that they were shaking. ‘We have to break in,’ he said. ‘If there’s so much as a mouse inside there, we’ve got to make it squeak.’
The others were still lying on the ground, white-faced. ‘Get up!’ he roared at them. They rose cautiously to their feet. Steiner gripped Anselm’s arm. ‘You go over there to Krüger. Tell him to post a guard at once about a hundred yards back along the road. Then hurry back here, cross the bridge and stand guard on the other side another hundred yards back in the woods. If a single Russian comes along, kill him; if there are more, run for it and report to me. Got it?’
Anselm nod
ded and began running back. Steiner turned to Maag. ‘You and Kern run past the houses now. Duck your heads; we’ll fire to cover you. Run as far as the last house and see whether there are any doors or windows on the north sides. If there are, see to it that nobody comes out. Get going.’
‘On this side?’ Kern asked.
‘Of course. If you run on the other side, I won’t be able to see what’s happening.’ He turned to Schnurrbart. ‘Fire high—I’ll take the first house, you the second and Hollerbach the third. Get ready!’
Kern and Maag started toward the houses. They moved leadenly. Steiner shouted: ‘Speed!’ They began running. When the three behind them started firing above their heads at the windows, they dropped to the ground. Steiner cursed. ‘Those idiots!’ he raged, and shouted: ‘Get up. That’s us, you idiots; we’re covering you.’ He waved his hand reassuringly toward Kern, who was glancing back anxiously. Behind his back, Schnurrbart and Hollerbach suppressed a giggle. Hollerbach said: ‘Those tin soldiers.’ They watched as Maag, too, raised his head and looked back. Seeing Steiner point the tommy-gun menacingly at him, he stood up quickly and began running on. Kern stayed on the ground a few seconds more; then he, too, rose and stumbled behind Maag. ‘Do we fire?’ Schnurrbart asked.
Steiner shook his head impatiently. ‘Those idiots will think it’s the Russians again. Anyway, they’re all right now.’ The two had already reached the last of the buildings. As they disappeared around the corner, Steiner wiped the sweat from his forehead. Although they had had no trouble at all up to now, he was filled with forebodings. Schnurrbart was right; there was something fishy here. The Russians couldn’t be giving up without a fight. Minutes passed. He stared again at the houses standing green-shuttered, quiet and peaceful in the morning sunlight. At that moment a volley of shots rang out from the north side of the house, where Kern and Maag must be.
When they reached the end of the third house, Kern and Maag had looked around them quickly. The building had no doors or windows on this side. Kern sighed with relief. He leaned his back against the stout logs and said: ‘Nothing here. What’ll we do now?’
Maag suspiciously eyed the woods, which began about fifty feet away. ‘I don’t know,’ he said hesitantly. ‘We’d better wait here. If Steiner wants us to do something, he’ll tell us.’ He crouched down on the ground, groped forth a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and handed it to Kern. They said nothing until both cigarettes were lit. Then Kern pushed his cap back on his head. Sighing, he said: ‘I wonder what’s going to happen next?’
‘We’ll find out soon enough,’ Maag replied gloomily. His freckled face twisted into a grimace. ‘I tell you, this thing stinks like limburger cheese.’
Maag again eyed the edge of the woods. How many times he had gone into the edge of dense woods just like these, on Sundays, with his girl, of course. He could see her now. She had a red dress she wore often. He recalled how he would tremble when they sat down anywhere, she with her long tanned legs folded beneath her. He would lie on his stomach and talk to distract his attention from her legs, while Monika regarded him with a faint smile. Still, she said she liked his self-control. Once she had given him a long kiss and remarked that he was the first boy she knew who didn’t lose his head right away. He had swallowed the compliment like a soldier receiving an undeserved medal. What would Monika have said, he wondered, if she knew the real reason for his restraint. He had to do something about that. When the war was over, he’d go to a doctor, to a specialist in mental things. He didn’t want to lose Monika. Though it would be a long time before they’d be in a position to get married. Maybe he would own his own garage some day. If it weren’t for this damned war, he’d be on his way now. He sighed again. The time a man lost, all on account of those bastards, those stinkers with their goddamned war.
Thinking of all these things, he stared into space. When Kern suddenly gripped his arm, he looked up angrily. ‘What’s the matter, what the devil do you want-’ The outburst faded. Kern’s face was chalky white. The innkeeper was staring in terror at the woods. ‘Do you see him?’ he stammered. His fear was contagious; Maag was frightened too. ‘What?’ he whispered, peering at the trees but seeing nothing unusual. ‘Russians,’ Kern whispered. Maag threw himself forward on his stomach and raised his rifle. ‘Where, where the devil do you see them?’ But Kern was so worked up he could not say another word. He pointed silently at a spot on the edge of the woods where the underbrush was particularly dense. Maag stared intently at it. He could feel his heart beating in short, hard thrusts, and tried to master his excitement. Once or twice he thought he detected movement among the branches, but each time he fixed his eyes upon a particular spot, he became unsure. Finally he turned to Kern, who lay beside him, ‘You’re imagining things.’
But Kern shook his head violently. ‘I saw it, I tell you—a head with a cap, a Russian cap.’
‘Where, damn it?’
‘Right in front of us. Over there by the crooked tree, where the branches are hanging low.’
‘Near the reeds?’
‘No, further to the right, over—there he is again—do you see him?’ Kern’s voice broke with excitement. Maag raised himself a little and immediately dropped back flat on the ground. Kern was not mistaken. Above the bushes, close to the trunk of a twisted alder, he could distinctly make out the face of a man staring steadily in his direction. It was impossible to tell whether the man had sighted them, but Maag had the feeling that the Russian was looking straight into his eyes. For a few seconds he lay paralysed, tom between the desire to jump up and run and the feeling that this would be bad for the whole platoon. Kern’s fear intensified his own uncertainty.
As he slowly raised his rifle, he was acting against his will. Seen through the gunsight, the Russian’s face looked like a white spot in the greenness of the wood. Maag lowered the barrel slightly. His finger tightened on the trigger. Then he fired. The shot screamed in the unnatural silence. As he shot again, he saw out of the comers of his eyes Kern raising his rifle and beginning to fire. Wildly, heedlessly, they both fired their magazines empty, turned on their sides, opening their ammunition pouches, reloaded with trembling fingers, and again fired like mad. The Russian’s face had long since disappeared. Before they could load again, Steiner appeared. He came rushing around, threw himself on the ground beside them and raised his tommy-gun. ‘What’s up?’ he shouted. Maag lowered his rifle and stammered: ‘R-R-Russians.’
‘Where?’
‘Over there.’
‘How many?’
‘I saw one.’
‘And?’
‘I don’t know,’ Maag murmured uncertainly. ‘He’s gone now.’ Steiner turned to Kern, who had meanwhile reloaded and was raising his rifle again. ‘What are you banging away at?’
‘Russians,’ Kern responded eagerly. Dimly inside him his fear still resounded like an echo. But now that Steiner was here, he felt more confident. Grinning, he said, ‘We gave it to him.’
‘Did you?’ Steiner said. He stood up slowly and looked scornfully down at the innkeeper. But Kern did not notice. He had suddenly become aware of how courageously he had fired into the woods. The others couldn’t have done any better, he told himself. The thought filled him with pride. After all, this war business wasn’t half bad. Keep on your toes, and you were all right. You just had to show the Russians you weren’t afraid of them. His fear gave way to almost hysterical high spirits. He looked up at Steiner, who was now regarding him with absolute malignance.
‘You’re the biggest fool I ever came across. Get up.’
Offended, Kern stood up and looked at Maag, who was fussing with his rifle and glancing uncertainly at the edge of the woods. ‘Come along,’ Steiner ordered. He started moving carefully toward the trees. They followed him at a considerable distance.
After some searching, Steiner found the Russian. He lay among the undergrowth, holding both hands pressed against his waist, bulging eyes resting on Steiner, who paused a few steps away from him
and studied him thoughtfully. Kern and Maag came up to him. When they saw the Russian, they stopped in alarm. Maag regained poise first. ‘We got him,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘I thought so. I aimed carefully.’ Kern glowered at Maag and was about to say something, but Steiner did not give him the chance. He stepped closer to the Russian, who watched each of his movements in fear. This one, too, was an elderly man. Their last reserves, Steiner thought. He looked around for the Russian’s gun until be noticed it lying half-concealed among the branches of a bush. Then he turned to Maag. ‘You did enough shooting to kill a regiment. But it’s good you got the man. Go and bring Krüger back here with you. The others are to stay at their posts.’
Maag hurried off, while Kern stood staring uncomfortably down at the Russian. He suddenly felt sorry for the old man, who lay helplessly on the ground, his face clenching with pain now and then. His eyes were still fixed upon Steiner who was indifferently studying the Russian tommy-gun. I wonder what he’s going to do with him? Kern thought. Lousy business sending old men like this up to the front. Maag must have hit him; I was just firing into the air. The thought relieved him. It was rotten to feel you’d killed someone, especially when it was a sorry-looking old bird like this. He turned his head and saw Maag and Krüger approaching.
‘What’s up?’ Krüger asked.
Steiner indicated the Russian. ‘Ask him where he was.’
Krüger went up to the wounded man and spoke to him. He had to repeat his question twice before the man moved his lips. The Russian’s voice was so faint and shaky that Krüger had to stoop down to him. When the man stopped talking, Krüger turned to Steiner. ‘He says he was watching the horses.’
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