by Irwin Shaw
Automatically, Christian noticed the energy and precision with which the men carried out their assignments. They’d be in Moscow in another three months, he thought heavily, and he’d still be sitting in Rennes taking abuse from Hardenburg, arresting pregnant women who had insulted German officers in the cafés. Soon there would be snow all over Russia, and here he was, one of the best skiers in Europe, playing policeman in the mild climate of Western France. The Army was a marvelous instrument, but there was no doubt about it, it had some grave imperfections.
One of the men on the screen fell. It was hard to tell whether he was taking cover or had been hit, but he didn’t get up, and the camera passed over him. Christian felt his eyes growing wet. He was a little ashamed of himself for it, but every time he saw these films of Germans fighting, while he sat safe and comfortable so far away, he had to curb a tendency to cry. And he always felt guilty and uneasy and was sharp-tempered with his men for days afterwards. It wasn’t his fault that he was alive while others were dying. The Army performed its intricate functions in its own way, but he couldn’t fight off the sense of guilt. And even the thought of going back home for two weeks was flavored by it. Young Frederick Langerman had lost a leg in Latvia and both sons of the Kochs had been killed and it would be impossible to avoid the measuring, contemptuous stares of his neighbors when he came back, well-fed and whole, with one half hour of semi-comic combat outside Paris behind him.
The war, he thought, had to end soon. Suddenly his civilian life, the easygoing, thoughtless days on the snowy slopes, the days without Lieutenant Hardenburg, seemed unbearably sweet and desirable. Well, the Russians were about to cash in, and then the British would finally see the light, and he would forget, these boring, silly days in France. Two months after it was over people would stop talking about the war, and a clerk who had added figures in the quartermaster’s office in Berlin for three years would get as much respect as a man who had stormed pillboxes in Poland, Belgium and Russia. Then, Hardenburg might show up some day, still a Lieutenant … or even better, discharged as unnecessary. And Christian would get him off alone in the hills and … He smiled sourly as he recognized the recurrent, childish dream. How long, he wondered, would they be likely to keep him in after the armistice was signed? Those would be the really difficult months, when the war was over and you just were waiting for the slow, enormous machinery of the Army’s bureaucracy to release you.
The newsreel ended and a photograph of Hitler was thrown on the screen and everybody stood at attention and saluted and sang, “Deutschland, Deutschland, über Alles.”
The lights went up and Christian moved slowly out among the crowd of soldiers. They all looked middle-aged, Christian thought bitterly, and like men who suffered from frailty and disease. Garrison troops, contemptuously left in a peaceful country while the better specimens of German manhood were out fighting the nation’s battles thousands of miles away. And he was one of them. He shook his head irritably. He’d better stop this or he’d get as bad as Hardenburg.
There were still some Frenchmen and women on the dark streets and they hastily stepped down into the gutter as he approached. He was annoyed at them, too. Timidity was one of the most irritating qualities in the human character. And it was a more or less needless and unfounded timidity, which was worse. He wasn’t going to hurt them and the entire Army was under the strictest orders to behave correctly and with the utmost politeness to the French. Germans, he thought, as a man stumbled a little stepping down from the curb, Germans would never behave like that if there were a foreign army in Germany. Any foreign army.
He stopped. “Old man!” he said.
The Frenchman stopped. Even in the dark, the hunch of his shoulders and the hasty movements of his hands showed how frightened he was.
“Yes,” the Frenchman said, his voice trembling a little, “yes, my colonel.”
“I am not a Colonel,” Christian said. What a childlike, infuriating form of flattery.
“Forgive me, Monsieur,” the Frenchman said. “In the dark …”
“You don’t have to step down in the street for me,” Christian said.
“Yes, Sir,” said the Frenchman. But he didn’t move.
“Get up here,” said Christian harshly. “Get up on the sidewalk.”
“Yes, Sir,” said the Frenchman. He stepped up tentatively. “I will show you my pass. My papers are in perfect order.”
“I don’t want to see your damned papers,” Christian said.
“Whatever you say, Sir.” The Frenchman spoke humbly.
“Ah,” said Christian. “Go home.”
“Yes, Sir.” The Frenchman scurried off and Christian continued on his way. A new Europe, he thought ironically, a powerful federation of dynamic states. Not with material like this. God, if only the war would end. Or if he were sent some place where the guns could be heard. It was this garrison life. Half civilian, half military, with all the drawbacks of both. It rotted the soul, robbed a man of ambition, faith. Maybe his application for officers’ school would come through and after he became a Lieutenant he would be sent to Russia or to Africa, and this period would fall into its proper perspective. He had put in his application three months ago and had heard nothing yet. Probably it was lying under a pile of papers on some fat corporal’s desk on the Wilhelmstrasse.
God, it was so different from what he had expected the day he had left home, the day he had come into Paris … He remembered the stories from the last war. The iron-bound, tender friendships formed under fire, the grim sense of duty performed and the sporadic flares of exaltation. He remembered the end of The Magic Mountain. Hans Castorp, in 1914, running into the French fire across the flower-spotted field, singing Beethoven. The book had ended too soon. There should have been a chapter showing Castorp three months later, checking off size 12 boots in a supply depot in Liége. Not singing anything.
The whole myth of comradeship in a war. He had had it for a moment with Brandt, on the road to Paris, and even, for a flicker in time, with Hardenburg going down the Boulevard des Italiens toward the Place de l’Opera. But now Brandt had been commissioned and was an important young officer with a flat in Paris, working on an Army magazine. And Hardenburg had lived up to all the worst expectations Christian had had of him in training. And the other men around him were swine. There was no getting away from it. They thanked God morning, noon and night they were in Rennes instead of outside Tripoli, or Kiev, and every one of them was busy making all sorts of black-market deals with the French and putting away piles of money for the depression after the war. How be comrades with men like that? Money-lenders. War-dodgers in uniform. Whenever any one of them was in danger of being sent to one of the fronts he pulled every wire imaginable, bribed regimental clerks, anything, to remain where he was. Christian was in an army of ten million men and he had never been so lonely in all his life. In Berlin on his leave he would go to the War Office. He knew a Colonel there, a man who had worked with him in Austria in the days before Anschluss, and he would ask him about a transfer to another and more active unit. Even if it meant giving up his rank …
He looked at his watch. He still had twenty minutes before having to report to the orderly room. There was a café open across the street and he suddenly needed a drink.
He opened the door. There were four soldiers drinking champagne at a table. They were red-faced and they had obviously been drinking a long time. They had their tunics unbuttoned and two of them needed shaves. Champagne, too. Certainly not on a private’s pay. Probably were selling stolen German Army weapons to the French. The French weren’t using them, of course, but there was no telling what might happen finally. Even the French might regain their courage. An army of black-market merchants, Christian thought bitterly, dealers in leather and ammunition and Normandy cheese and wine and veal. Leave them in France another two years and you wouldn’t be able to distinguish them from the French except by their uniforms. The subtle, shabby victory of the Gallic spirit.
�
�A vermouth,” Christian said to the proprietor, who was standing nervously behind the bar. “No, a brandy.”
He leaned against the bar and stared at the four soldiers. The champagne was probably awful. Brandt had told him the French put any kind of label on any kind of miserable wine. The Germans didn’t know better, and it was the French way of fighting back, patriotism mixed, of course, with profit.
The four soldiers noticed Christian watching them. They became a little self-conscious and lowered their voices as they drank. Christian saw one of the men rub his hand guiltily across his unshaven cheek. The proprietor put the brandy down in front of Christian and he sipped at it, staring stonily at the four soldiers. One of the men took out his wallet to pay for a new bottle of champagne and Christian saw that it was bulging carelessly with francs. God, was it for these soft, conniving gangsters that Germans were hurling themselves against the Russian lines? Was it for these flabby shopkeepers that the Luftwaffe was burning over London?
“You!” Christian said, to the man with the wallet. “Come over here!”
The man with the wallet looked at his comrades thoughtfully. They were very quiet and they stared down into their glasses. The man with the wallet stood up slowly and stuffed his money away in a pocket.
“Move!” Christian said fiercely. “Get over here.”
The soldier shuffled over to Christian, his face growing pale under his stubble.
“Stand up!” Christian said. “Stand at attention!”
The man stiffened, looking more frightened than ever.
“What’s your name?” Christian snapped.
“Private Hans Reuter, Sergeant,” the man said, in a low, nervous voice.
Christian took out a pencil and a slip of paper and wrote the name down. “Organization?” he asked.
The soldier swallowed unhappily. “147th Battalion of Pioneers,” he said.
Christian wrote that down. “The next time you go out to drink, Private Reuter,” he said, “you will shave and keep your tunic buttoned. You will also stand at attention when addressing your superiors. I’m submitting your name for disciplinary action.”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“Dismissed.”
Reuter sighed and turned back to his table.
“All of you,” Christian called bitingly, “dress like soldiers!”
The men buttoned their tunics. They sat in silence.
Christian turned his back on them and stared at the proprietor.
“Another brandy, Sergeant?”
“No.”
Christian put some money on the bar for the drink, finished the brandy. He stalked out without looking at the four soldiers sitting in the corner.
Lieutenant Hardenburg was sitting in the orderly room with his cap and gloves on. He sat erectly, as though he was on a horse, staring across the room at the Propaganda Ministry’s map of Russia, with the battle lines, as of last Tuesday, drawn on it in victorious black and red strokes. The orderly room was in an old French police building, and there was a smell of ancient small crimes and unwashed French policemen that all the brisk cleanliness of the German Army had failed to eradicate. A single small bulb burned overhead and it was hot because the windows and blinds were closed for the blackout and the ghosts of all the petty criminals who had been beaten in the room seemed to be hovering in the stale air.
When Christian came into the room, a little, greasy man in the uniform of the French Milice was standing uneasily near the window, occasionally glancing at Hardenburg. Christian stood at attention and saluted, thinking: This cannot go on forever, this will end some day.
Hardenburg paid no attention to him and it was only because Christian knew him so well that he was sure Hardenburg was aware he was in the room, and waiting. Christian stood rigidly at the doorway, examining the Lieutenant’s face.
As Christian watched Hardenburg, he knew that he hated that face worse than the faces of any of his enemies. Worse than Churchill, worse than Stalin, worse than any tank captain or mortar gunner in the British or Russian armies.
Hardenburg looked at his watch. “Ah,” he said, without looking around, “the Sergeant’s on time.”
“Yes, Sir,” said Christian.
Hardenburg strode over to the paper-littered desk and sat down behind it. He picked up one of the papers and said, “Here are the names and photographs of three men we have been looking for. They were called for Labor Service last month and have evaded us so far. This gentleman …” with a slight, cold gesture toward the Frenchman in the Milice uniform …“this gentleman pretends to know where all three can be found.”
“Yes, Lieutenant,” the Frenchman said eagerly. “Absolutely, Lieutenant.”
“You will take a detail of five,” Hardenburg said, going on as though the Frenchman were not in the room, “and pick up these three men. There is a truck and a driver in the courtyard and the detail is already in it.”
“Yes, Sir,” said Christian.
“You,” said Hardenburg to the Frenchman. “Get out of here.”
“Yes, Sir.” The Frenchman gasped a little as he spoke, and went quickly out the door.
Hardenburg stared at the map on the wall. Christian felt himself begin to sweat in the warm room. All the lieutenants in the German Army, he thought, and I had to get Hardenburg.
“At ease, Diestl.” Hardenburg did not stop looking at the map.
Christian moved his feet slightly.
“Everything in order?” Hardenburg asked in a conversational tone. “You have all the proper papers for your leave?”
“Yes, Sir,” said Christian. Now, he thought, this is going to happen. It’s going to be canceled. Unbearable.
“You’re going to Berlin first, before going home?”
“Yes, Sir.”
Hardenburg nodded, without taking his eyes from the map. “Lucky man,” he said. “Two weeks among Germans, instead of these swine.” He made an abrupt gesture of his head, indicating the spot where the Frenchman had been standing. “I’ve been trying to get leave for four months. Can’t be spared,” he said bitterly. “Too important here.” He almost laughed. “I wonder if you could do me a favor.”
“Of course, Sir,” said Christian, and then was angry with himself for the alacrity with which he spoke.
Hardenburg took out a set of keys from his pocket and unlocked one of the desk drawers. He lifted a small, carefully wrapped package out of the drawer and locked it methodically again. “My wife,” he said, “lives in Berlin. I’ve written the address down here.” He gave Christian a slip of paper. “I’ve uh … secured … a beautiful piece of lace here.” He tapped the package gravely. “Very beautiful. Black. From Brussels. My wife is very fond of lace. I had hoped to be able to give it to her in person, but the prospect of leave …” He shrugged. “And the mail system.” He shook his head. “They must have every thief in Germany in the post offices. After the war,” he said angrily, “there should be a thorough investigation. However … I was thinking, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, my wife lives quite near the station …”
“I’d be delighted,” Christian said stiffly.
“Thank you.” Hardenburg handed Christian the package. “Give her my most tender regards,” Hardenburg said. He smiled frostily. “You might even say I think of her constantly.”
“Yes, Sir,” said Christian.
“Very good. Now, about these three men.” He tapped the sheet in front of him. “I know I can depend upon you.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“I have been instructed that it might be advisable to be a little rough in these matters from now on,” Hardenburg said. “As an example to the others. Nothing serious, you understand, but a little shouting, a blow with the back of the hand, a show of guns …”
“Yes, Sir,” said Christian, holding gently onto the package of lace, feeling it soft under the paper.
“That will be all, Sergeant.” Hardenburg turned back to the map. “Enjoy yourself in Berlin.”
“Than
k you, Sir.” Christian saluted. “Heil Hitler.”
But Hardenburg was already lost among the armor on the rolling plains on the road to Smolensk, and he barely lifted his hand as Christian went out the door, stuffing the lace into his tunic and buttoning it to make sure the package would not fall out.
The first two men on the list were hiding out together in an unused garage. They grinned a little worriedly at the sight of the guns and soldiers, but they made no trouble.
The next address the Milice Frenchman directed them to was in a slum neighborhood. The house itself smelled of bad plumbing and garlic. The boy they dragged out of bed clung to his mother and they both screamed hysterically. The mother bit one of the soldiers and he hit her in the belly and knocked her down. There was an old man who sat at a table weeping, with his head in his hands. All in all, it was as unpleasant as could be. There was another man in the apartment, too, hiding in one of the closets. Christian suspected from the look of him that he was a Jew. His papers were out-of-date and he was so frightened he couldn’t answer any questions at all. For a moment Christian was tempted to leave him alone. After all; he had only been sent out for the three boys, not to pick up random suspects, and if it turned out the man was a Jew it would mean concentration camp and eventual death. But the man from the Milice kept watching him and whispering, “Juif, juif.” He’d be sure to tell Hardenburg and it would be just like Hardenburg to have Christian recalled from his leave to face charges of neglect of duty.
“You’d better come along,” he said, as kindly as possible to the Jew. The man was fully dressed. He had been sleeping with all his clothes on, even his shoes, as though he had been ready to flee at a second’s notice. He looked blankly around the room, at the middle-aged woman lying on the floor moaning and holding her belly, at the old man bowed over and weeping at the table, at the crucifix over the bureau, as though it was his last home and death was waiting for him the moment he stepped outside the door. He tried to say something, but his mouth merely hung open and went through the motions of speech without any sound coming from the pale lips.