To Die in Spring

by Ralf Rothmann

  Not a soul in the streets, not a dog; he pushed the BMW out of the shed and was screwing the spark plug back in when the Blitzmädel came out of the pub. Her tie with its eagle pin was tied properly again, her hands were in her jacket pockets. She looked into the sky, where the evening star was shining. ‘So, are you leaving me alone?’ she asked and smiled wearily, closing her eyes for a moment. The skin of her face, still alabaster in the kitchen, now just looked washed out. ‘You men are all the same . . . My name is Reinhild, by the way, in case you want to try and remember me. Reinhild Lerche. My family lives in Grainbach in the Chiemgau. We embroider these traditional cloths . . . Did you ever find your father’s grave?’

  The rhythmic wail of the ‘Stalin organs’, the Russian rocket launchers, sounded in the distance, only occasionally interrupted by the crash of German artillery. Walter put on his gloves and shook his head; after he had swung himself onto the rubber seat, the woman stepped closer to him. Her milk-blue eyes were clear, her expression alert; she leaned over, keeping her hands in her pockets, and kissed Walter on the temple. She whispered in his ear, ‘Stay safe, you hear me?’ He nodded, wished her the same thing, a hoarse, ‘You too!’ and started the engine.

  *

  He spent the night in a windowless hut on the edge of the vineyards, on a flat raffia bed. The door bolted on the inside, but he could see the sky through the holes in the roof, the white moonlit rims of clouds. The honks of wild geese came from the north. Somewhere an engine roared, and a little later went quiet, this quiet becoming rather overbearing as soon as Walter noticed it.

  Willow panniers hung on the wall above him, and he pulled the tough remains of grapes from the weave and chewed on them until they gave off no more sweetness, and no sourness either. Then he spat them out, clasped his hands behind his neck and looked at the furry patches of saltpetre efflorescence on the wall, which looked like the silhouettes of people, same as the ones he sometimes saw with his eyes closed – a sequence of profiles, just their outlines, slipping quickly across his retina, familiar and strange at the same time.

  After he had slept for a few hours, he set off again early in the morning, while it was still dark. The air was filled with the roar of Russian bombers flying west at a high altitude, and every now and again an Ilyushin left the squadron and looked for targets in the lowlands. Walter, who had stuffed the sidecar with dry brushwood and tied a straw mat to his back, got through the steppe without being fired at, and in the late morning he reached Győr, where hardly a house had been left undamaged and even the church towers were smoking.

  Here too the flight was beginning, handcarts and horse carts being laden with household goods, and Walter drove slowly along a rickety pontoon across the Raab, which smelled of putrefaction. In the grey-green current, corpses drifted in their German and Russian uniforms, spinning in the eddies, disappearing beneath the boards and reappearing on the other side. Some, stiff and swollen, got stuck, and soon trapped any new arrivals among the boats and vessels, which endangered the necessary mobility of the whole enterprise: children immediately came running with long poles and poked the floating bodies free again.

  Rain was falling, but the sun shone behind the veil of water. Corpses with bloodstained faces lay on the road to Abda, and when Walter took a turn around the stable building of a farmyard, he found himself facing a long line of haggard men in grey prison uniform marching towards him. They were Jewish forced labourers from the mines in Bor, he was told by a guard on a bicycle at the rear of the column – a Hungarian-German clutching a ‘broom handle’, an old Mauser. ‘We’re taking them home to the Reich. If they stumble, they’re done for. Don’t know why we’re still doing this to them.’ With his forearms on the handlebars, he spat out some tobacco juice; it dripped thickly from the lamp. ‘Why we don’t just finish them off, I mean. What do they expect to get out of these scrawny buggers . . . Hey, do you have any schnapps?’

  A pair of rusty pincers hung from his belt. Walter said no and rode slowly past the procession. The men, hung with scraps of sacks and blankets, held their stubbly heads low and barely noticed him. Struggling to keep pace, in foot wraps or barefoot, they stared straight ahead apathetically and only gave a start – for some it was hardly a twitch of the eyelids – if, somewhere in the endless row ahead, the strangely toneless report of a nearby pistol rang out, like a hand clapping. Then they straightened their backs, and all marched a little faster.

  Just before a signposted fork in the road, Walter reached into the sidecar and handed the nearest man his last tin of sausage. The slender, bespectacled man, whose trouser legs were different lengths, immediately hid it under his jacket and nodded, barely perceptibly, looking neither at Walter nor at the man who had just been shot by the edge of the field – who trembled and convulsed and dug his bare heels into the earth as a militiaman forced his jaws apart. From this soldier’s belt too, on a gold watch-chain, there hung a pair of pincers.

  According to the signpost, Abda was still three kilometres away, yet Walter could hear church bells ringing noon. Heavy anti-aircraft batteries guarded the supply corps base, a big farmyard with buildings on all four sides, and Walter took his bike to the vehicle repair supervisor and hung up his luggage in the driver’s room beside the stables. The command office on the ground floor of the house – practically a castle – was filled with the clatter of typewriters, and the visibly exhausted Troche, the Hauptsturmführer’s adjutant, examined Walter’s marching orders. ‘Well, look at this!’ he said. ‘People are even coming back . . . Nice trip? Good weather?’ He put a cigarette in his mouth and walked to the telephone. ‘Eat and stay prepared!’

  Walter closed the door, following the signs. In a room full of paintings and mirrors lay wounded men, most of them on straw, and as for the kitchen, nothing had been cooked there in quite some time: doctors and orderlies in dirty coats were standing around the work table; arms and legs red and blue with gangrene were sticking out of the sink. A nurse shook her head and pointed to the open barn at the back of the farmyard. In the storeroom, which held new engines and tank turrets, and whose walls were stacked with cages full of messenger pigeons, there was a mobile field kitchen.

  It had a drawbar, and an unharnessed horse dozed beside a hayrack in the corner. Walter filled a tin plate and joined the drivers who were sitting and playing cards at the end of a long table. ‘Ah, look who it is!’ said Jörn. ‘Now we’re all here. Did you take your picture?’ And when Walter said no and handed him the camera: ‘But you’ve taken a few pictures of Wallachian sheep for me?’

  Jörn had been a veterinary student in Hanover, as Walter recalled. He nodded in reply and ate a spoonful of potato soup. The three other men at the table, who were drinking wine from crystal glasses, wore no collar patches; Jörn introduced them to him: Friedhelm and Hermann, school students from Munich, and their bunkmate Florian, an apprentice tanner from Tulln on the Danube. Even though they were similar in age, Florian called the other two ‘little lads’; all of them wore new caps, and the light-blue pennants of the supply unit on their sleeves were still clean. Already inebriated, though it was only midday, they argued about the rules of whatever game they were playing and banged the cards down so that the matches they were playing for leaped into the air.

  Jörn wasn’t sober either. He slid closer to Walter, plucked a hair from his soup and said, ‘They don’t just infuriate everyone with their farting, they also play like Cossacks – I haven’t a chance. August caught it, by the way, August Klander. Our geologist wanted to pick up a shiny stone, but unfortunately there was a mine underneath. Now he’ll never have to wash his hands again. Fiete’s here, did you know?’

  Walter lowered the spoon which was already at his mouth, and nodded towards the road. ‘You mean out in Győr, in the field hospital?’

  Jörn ran his tongue over his teeth and closed his eyes for a moment. ‘He’s right here,’ he said. ‘Here in the basement, under lock and key. The stupid bastard . . .’

  ‘But why?�
�� Walter asked. ‘How’s that possible? He’s wounded.’

  The clouds drifted apart, and harsh light fell through the barn door and made the tiny pockmarks on Jörn’s forehead seem to disappear . . . but his expression remained dark and still; not an eyelid twitched as he answered Walter’s question with a silence that was more piercing than any words. It was only after Jörn had taken a sip from his glass that he repeated quietly: ‘That stupid bastard. So soon before the end . . . The Yanks are already at the Rhine!’

  Walter, who had started sweating and was finding it hard to breathe, opened the collar of his jacket. He stared at the horse, an old beast with a bony rump and sagging withers, as Jörn slid his glass over to him and returned to the game, picking up a new hand and looking it over. ‘At first I thought I hadn’t heard right,’ he murmured. ‘But there was no mistake. Now, of course, it’s looking grim. No one can help him now.’

  Walter set his spoon aside, and Friedhelm, a thin boy in a uniform that was too big for him, peered out from under his eyebrows. The red-wine rim on his lip looked like old blood. ‘And just guess,’ he asked, ‘who’s going to be throwing him his farewell party?’ Swaying on his chair, he drew a card from his hand and pointed around the table with it. ‘All of us, our bunk. Which means you too. He’s for it, tomorrow morning.’

  Friedhelm threw an ace on the table, the others responded, and Walter tipped the remainder of his potato soup in front of the horse. The animal’s belly and legs were encrusted with mud, its mane was matted, but where yoke and traces had been its coat was as silkily brown as a yearling’s in the sun. Finally, Walter laughed – a dry sound that scratched his throat – before climbing over the bench and saying, ‘That’s enough, you idiots! You’re all drunk! I almost believed your nonsense!’ He looked at Jörn. ‘It’s April Fools’ Day, right?’

  The horse stamped, and the muddy ground sounded hollow. The senior soldier who was nominally in charge of the bunk didn’t reply, or only with a sad smile. He added a few matches to the pot, asked whose turn it was and played a new card that clearly wasn’t going to get him anywhere – the schoolboys groaned anyway. The apprentice tanner, a laughing, tow-headed boy, his hands dyed blue, clawed in his gains and said languidly, in an Austrian accent: ‘Today’s the twentieth of March. Pull yourself together. What are we supposed to do? Orders are orders. If we refuse, it’s us against the wall. I’m not going to die for some dreamer. I’ve got a girl at home!’

  *

  In the air, the barking of guns. A snub-nosed transport glider made its way towards the field as smoke rose from the hedge. Behind the thumb-smudged panes of glass, one could see the pale faces of Hitler Youth, who clearly weren’t flying for the first time. It stayed calmly on course, the runners soon touching the earth, but the Ilyushin that had fired on the glider came back in spite of the ack-ack guns and fired again. Now it caught the rudder and shredded a plywood wing, whereupon the body of the glider tipped sideways and the payload, after a ghostly moment of silence – one boy tried to push it out of a side hatch – exploded, sending flames high in the air.

  The blast shattered the windows in the farm, and while his comrades ran across the field with blankets, shovels and buckets, Walter walked under the arcades and down the steps to the basement. His heels echoed louder with each step.

  There was only a faint light in the corridor of rusty metal doors. The Sturmmann on a stool beside the radiator was cutting an apple with his bayonet, and when Walter presented his request he shook his head and said, ‘You can forget that one, private, at least without a permit. The people behind these doors aren’t anybody’s friends.’ Then he raised his head and studied Walter coldly. ‘But if you have tender feelings for a deserter, perhaps we should go and see the boss or something? About sodomy and so on?’

  A quiet ringing above their heads. Fine dust fell from the grey wings of a moth fluttering around the lamp; the guard fixed the bayonet back on his rifle. ‘You know what we did with the partisans in the mountains, that Tito crowd? Lined them up back to chest and betted on how many would fall over if we shot the first one in the heart or the neck. It’s a way of saving ammunition, you can make a few marks and have some fun at the same time. That’s how we should deal with our own bastards here. Now, bugger off!’

  He spat out some peel and Walter climbed the stairs and paused behind the stacks of tyres and sacks of oats before leaving the farm by a side door. The sky was deep grey now, and wind rustled in the spring grain. With the heat of the burning glider on the back of his neck, he looked through the basement windows along the edge of the field, a long row, all barred. The gaps between the steel strips looked like thorns.

  In one of the deep rooms, lit by the glow of flame, where yellowish green and violet turnips were stacked in boxes, two soldiers sat on the stone floor. They weren’t wearing boots, just foot wraps, and they kept their heads lowered when Walter’s shadow fell over them. Shining on their collars were the embroidered sabres of the Handschar Division – Bosnian Muslims. Their fezzes, which bore the SS death’s head, lay on the floor beside them; Walter whistled through his teeth.

  A bearded man with thickly swollen eyelids looked up. His fingernails were black and jagged, his knuckles bruised, and when Walter asked him quietly about Fiete, the man shook his head and murmured something incomprehensible. As soon as Walter knelt on the ground, however, pressing his forehead against the bars to look deeper into the room, there was a cough from the cell’s darkest corner, a clattering as if of wooden shoes, and suddenly his friend stood under the window, tilting his head back and asking, ‘Is that you?’

  Judging by his voice, Fiete had a bad cold. Instead of a uniform he was wearing a peasant shirt – once white, now bloodstained – with knots for buttons, as well as a sheepskin waistcoat and blue canvas trousers. His face looked even more emaciated than it had done days before, and his angular cheekbones stood out; there was a feverish gleam in his eyes. But his arm was no longer in a sling.

  ‘Christ alive, what’s wrong with you?’ Walter hissed, looking round. A guard had come out of the gate to watch the firefighting work. ‘Have you lost your mind? Why didn’t you stay in the field hospital?’

  But Fiete dismissed this notion with a wave and coughed again, reaching into his shirt and putting a hand on his collarbone through the dirty bandage. He spat out some pus and slumped on a chopping block, and when he crossed his legs a clog slipped from his foot. ‘Why, why, what . . . Aren’t you full of questions! I just didn’t want to go to the front, simple as that.’

  Sweat ran down Walter’s temples, though he felt as though his blood had turned to ice. He crushed a few nits between his fingernails, hands trembling.

  ‘They’d already put a transport together,’ said Fiete. ‘Everyone capable of crawling had to go out and fight again, at the front line, and I knew it would be my turn, this time . . . You don’t get away with a splinter twice. I don’t suppose you’ve got a smoke, Ata?’

  Walter said no with a blink, and Fiete hunched his shoulders and folded his arms in front of his chest. ‘Pole Star always over your right ear, that’s how you find your way west, I read somewhere. And when it got dark, I went out the window. But there were no stars that night, it was all cloudy, and I trudged for hours through the pitch-dark wilderness – kept ending up in the mud. Until I saw something shimmering in front of me, two silver moons. And you know what one of the cops said to the other?’ Drawing in air through his teeth, he scratched in his trouser pocket. ‘“Look, another romantic.”’

  Fiete met Walter’s stare, and for a moment his eyes lit up. ‘By the way . . . Ortrud actually applied for our long-distance wedding, imagine that. At the register office in Schleswig. Who knows, maybe we’re married already. I’d rather have had it in Hamburg, but it doesn’t matter, I’m not there anyway.’ He smiled flatly and winked at Walter. ‘She’s pregnant, too.’

  The black smoke of the fire wafted over. Walter shivered again, his teeth chattering as he let go of the bar over
the window. It was raining now, and wet rust stuck to his hands. ‘Right then, listen, we’ve got to do something. I’ll have a word with the Hauptsturmführer,’ he said and got to his feet. ‘I’ll go there right now. You weren’t in your right mind, and that’s all there is to it. Veronal, Pervitin or alcohol. Or all three, because of the pain. They won’t just put you up against the wall. You can’t shoot down a wounded man, there must be laws . . . I mean, we’re soldiers, we’ve got honour, that’s what they’re always telling us, isn’t it? It’s on our belt buckles.’

  He looked round again. The guard was taking a swig from his canteen. Walter quickly wriggled out of his coat and stuck it through the bars. ‘Hang on to that, it’s getting cold. I’ll get you some blankets too.’

  Fiete stood up to take the coat. ‘Thanks,’ he croaked and felt the fabric, the fulled wool, specially manufactured for drivers; the inside lining rarely got wet. ‘I could use a bit of sulphur ointment, for the itching. But tobacco more than anything!’ Then he wrapped himself in the coat, slumped back on the block and murmured, ‘Well, what’s the point? I’d never have known which star was the right one anyway.’

  Walter nodded to him. The gutters dripped above. Curtains blew from the broken windows of the building. The transport glider was almost extinguished. A few soldiers shovelled soil onto the remaining embers, others dragged away boxes of rescued cargo, probably rifles, while the corpses of the two Hitler Youth lay, charred and smoking, on the spring grain. Crows squatted in the trees.

  *

  The ashtrays under the table lamps were full to overflowing, and when the clatter of the typewriters paused for a moment you could hear the quick footsteps of the nurses and the wounded in the mirrored hall. The Hauptsturmführer’s adjutant pulled a couple of green flags from the map on the wall to move them a bit further west, meanwhile taking stock of Walter out of the corner of his eye: