Pale Horse Riding

by Chris Petit

  Morgen looked at Schlegel. The words – ‘everyone else does’ – hung in the air.

  ‘Actually, it’s policy now,’ said Horn, offering them a mint. ‘The garrison healthcare and dental programme is excellent, by the way. Really first rate.’

  ‘What is policy?’ asked Morgen.

  It was one of those conversations neither looked like he wanted to continue.

  Horn, sucking his mint, asked, ‘What do you know about here?’

  ‘Little more than we have discussed,’ said Morgen.

  ‘Have you looked around?’

  ‘We came straight from the hotel.’

  ‘Has anyone said about the epidemic?’

  ‘Only in passing,’ Schlegel said. Schulze had mentioned a quarantine lasting almost a year.

  Horn looked at Schlegel. ‘So you do talk. This place has been in lockdown for as long as anyone can remember. Typhus. Figures off the scale. I lost two members of staff. Everyone stuck here, going out of their minds from boredom. There’s a private holiday centre in the hills where people go. There are only so many clubs one can join. I don’t sing and I am too old for exercise. But I digress.’

  ‘What policy?’

  ‘This place is a huge recycling and sorting centre. Nothing wasted.’

  ‘Policy?’ insisted Morgen.

  ‘Maybe not actual policy, but what I heard. With so many dying and nothing allowed to go to waste, someone had the bright idea of recycling the gold from the teeth of those taken by the typhus.’

  Schlegel looked at the nuggets, and thought: From the mouths of the dead.

  Horn added, ‘Gold being not infectious.’

  Morgen said, ‘That is a lot of epidemic.’

  ‘The smoke?’ Schlegel offered.

  Horn nodded. ‘Smoke is the epidemic. Belching smoke, ashes, day after day. That nasty stink is cremation. Typhus has ravaged this place, killed God knows how many. Dog shit and geraniums are all here is good for.’

  ‘Is it true about the gold?’ asked Schlegel, as they emerged, staggering under the weight of the sun.

  ‘The idea has been around for years. Victor Scholz.’

  ‘Who is Scholz?’

  ‘I have no idea now. Then he was a student and his doctoral thesis at the University of Breslau was entitled Possibility of Recycling Gold from the Mouths of the Dead. Published in 1940.’

  Schlegel always feared one day he would become contaminated by Morgen’s secrets.

  ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘I read about it in a legal magazine, discussed as a point of law, not long after publication.’

  Schlegel shivered in spite of the heat.

  Morgen didn’t want to wait for Bock and said they should pick him up now.

  They wasted a couple of hours trying to locate his clinic where they were told he wasn’t available, being away on a course that day, which Schlegel supposed was an excuse for bunking off.

  With nothing else to do, they went back to the hotel and agreed to eat early.

  Schlegel sat in his room and wrote a tired letter to his stepfather. He had to use a blunt pencil, borrowed from the desk downstairs, because his pen was already missing. The soft lead made the letter look like a product of psychiatric care. The content made him appear backward. For security reasons, he was unable to say where he was or what he was doing, other than being away and he hoped everyone was as well as could be expected, and so on. The act of writing depressed him even more than the lazier alternative, which was not to.

  They ate in silence. Tench with potatoes, cucumber and dill salad. Already by six the room was noisy with drinkers in for the long evening.

  Morgen’s mood did not improve when they heard his name being called. Schlegel turned to see a lean man of upright bearing, impeccably suited, with soft, spoiling good looks, bearing down on them.

  ‘Morgen! Fegelein,’ he announced.

  He insisted on shaking Morgen by the hand, then Schlegel, who mumbled he was Klein, thinking their cover was already blown.

  ‘Morgen!’ Fegelein repeated. ‘Here of all places!’

  He turned to Schlegel. ‘Morgen and I are old adversaries.’

  Morgen said, ‘Can you please stop using my name.’

  ‘Oh, I see, ha-ha!’ Fegelein said it with a little shuffle, to show he was quick on his feet. He winked at Schlegel. ‘Here to snoop, are we?’ He clapped Morgen on the shoulder. ‘Our friend here failed to get the better of me a couple of years ago, and he was the one who ended up in penal detention, not me!’

  Schlegel felt obliged to loathe the man. Kammler and Morgen had talked of him – the equestrian involved in a fur scandal, which Morgen was warned off.

  Fegelein clicked his heels. ‘Now I am the Reichsführer’s personal staff liaison to the Chancellery. And you?’

  Schlegel wondered if his presence had something to do with them being there but Morgen seemed to regard him as no more than a consummate brown-noser.

  ‘What brings you?’ Morgen asked, ignoring the question.

  Fegelein looked around and clapped his hands.

  ‘A bit of official, a bit of unofficial. Hence the mufti. Actually, I am here for horse experiments to find a breed able to survive the Russian winter.’

  ‘Bit late for that.’

  ‘Defeatist talk. I could have you shot, ha-ha! I must say, dear Heini admits to being quite bamboozled by you. I follow your career with interest.’ He tapped his nose. ‘Not a word to anyone.’

  He touched his lips as if sealing them. ‘I’m here a few days. We must reacquaint. Smoke the pipe of peace and all that.’

  He gave a breezy wave before strolling off, leaving Morgen shaking his head.

  ‘One of the most unsavoury arseholes in the whole of the Reich. Consider our cover officially blown. We may as well get drunk.’

  They were still trying and failing to, despite enormous quantities of liquor downed, when they were accosted by the commandant’s adjutant who said they were to follow him. For the second time that evening someone seemed to know who they were.

  He told them they were in breach of etiquette for failing to pay their respects to the commandant.

  ‘Juppe,’ he said. ‘I will drive you.’

  Juppe was blond, supercilious, china-blue eyes, cheekbones, aquiline nose; everything correct except reduced height and a prominent Adam’s apple that was impossible not to stare at.

  They made a point of sitting in the back of the car, reducing Juppe to the role of chauffeur. No one spoke. They took a ring road around the prison, which was walled, lit up and manned with watchtowers. It looked huge compared to the adjacent garrison where they were waved through the main gate.

  The adjutant parked outside the first block and led them across the road to a door in a high wall.

  What lay beyond was a shock: an abundant private garden in late bloom, lawn and roses, ferns and exotic shrubs, bathed in the glow of street lamps behind. Within the garden stood a further walled space, revealing a secret enclave, with a gazebo and summerhouse of whitewashed brick, with verandah and murals, trellises, a large formal pond and a children’s sandpit.

  A dark object on the mown lawn, Schlegel realised, as he nearly trod on it, was a tortoise.

  A man stood on the patio in braces and shirtsleeves, smoking a cigar. He tersely announced himself as Hoess, commandant, and dismissed Juppe.

  He inspected them slowly, with a gaze of considerable power. At the same time, Schlegel couldn’t help thinking he looked like a clerk or schoolteacher. The obvious thugs were at least predictable.

  ‘State your business.’

  The high voice further undermined the image strived for by the razored bullet head, the jut of the chin and mirrored shine of the boots. Schlegel suspected any suspicion of being laughed at would release wild rage.

  ‘A case of gold smuggling,’ said Morgen.

  ‘Show your authority.’

  They produced their false papers. The commandant held them disdainfully at
arm’s-length and squinted. ‘The post office! Richter and Klein? Is this a comic turn? Really?’

  ‘We are investigating on behalf of the post office.’

  ‘Why wasn’t I told? We have our own discipline, Richter. Or are you Klein?’ The voice dripped with sarcasm.

  Schlegel was sure the commandant already knew because of Fegelein.

  Morgen said, ‘The post office is bound to investigate violations of its service.’

  Smoke wreathed the commandant’s head. Schlegel realised the man was stinking drunk. The roses shone deep pink in the night.

  They were joined by a woman in silhouette, stepping out of the summerhouse.

  ‘Why are you talking to these men?’

  The commandant grunted. ‘My wife.’

  Schlegel had the impression they had interrupted a row, not one of the shouting ones. The woman looked more the type for silent invective. He couldn’t see her properly because she remained in the shadows.

  Morgen said, ‘You have a beautiful garden.’

  The commandant relented somewhat and said it was his wife’s work.

  ‘The pride and joy of the whole family,’ she added.

  Schlegel read hatred on his part, contempt on hers, so obvious they could have put up a hoarding. In Berlin he found people altogether harder to read. Here they seemed like comic-strip characters with thought bubbles. The one coming from the commandant’s head might be saying: Here am I, a god in my own land and yet . . .

  The wife’s appearance brought an impasse but with it an almost imperceptible change, like the slightest shift in wind direction, warning of storms to come.

  She posed statuesquely while the commandant inspected the last of his cigar. The atmosphere grew electric. Schlegel found the commandant and his wife like figures in a provincial drama, dressed up for no reason, in a place less real. He had a dim inkling that someone like him had once stood in Roman Mesopotamia or Jerusalem watching such a scene. Maybe the same few limited scenarios of love and hate played themselves out, like a repeating film, and their story was already decided, only they were in the dark because unlike actors they had not been shown the script.

  The commandant asked Schlegel, ‘Do you ride?’

  Schlegel was thrown by the question because it had been Kammler’s too. The commandant asked Morgen the same.

  ‘Once or twice and badly.’

  ‘First we ride, then we have a little shooting party. Six o’clock at the stables.’

  Back at the hotel, the bar was hellbent in pursuit of oblivion, more cranked up, on the turn, with a prospect of fistfights.

  Was there still a plan, asked Schlegel, standing in the squash.

  Morgen said, ‘I fear we will be reduced to terrible improvisations.’

  They stayed up drinking.

  Schlegel talked to a man with owlish spectacles, less drunk than he was. The man puffed contently on his pipe and told him the region was a secret crisis area and the trains that came were split between incoming workers and hospital transports for the sick, which were confined in vast quarantine pens.

  Schlegel, interested, asked if the man had seen the area.

  ‘Strictly off limits, but people who have were issued masks to prevent infection.’

  He was a food expert, he said, working on synthetic rations and mineral supplements. He had it on good authority that the sick were from the epidemic raging throughout Europe and the eastern territories. ‘None of it reported, of course, and it will kill far more than the war, like the Spanish influenza of 1918. It’s nature’s way of saying who is in control.’

  He spoke as one who knew. Later, standing on the fringe of a noisy drinking crowd, Schlegel pointed out the man to the woman next to him, and told her about his food research. She looked at him in astonishment. ‘Gunther?’ Schlegel already felt a fool. Gunther was a clerk in the paymaster’s office.

  ‘You’re late,’ snapped the commandant.

  He wore riding jodhpurs, complete with spurs and a whip. His mount carried an elaborately tooled cowboy-style saddle.

  The breath of the waiting horses mingled with the thick mist that had fallen over the garrison, reducing visibility to soft outlines.

  Morgen said they had got lost because of the fog.

  They were badly hungover. Schlegel stood unsteadily on the mounting stone. When he put his food in the stirrup the saddle slipped.

  ‘The girth is loose!’ screamed the commandant.

  Two grooms emerged, little more than boys. The commandant asked which had saddled up. The two stood rooted, incapable of speech, until one lad pointed to the other, shifting the blame.

  The commandant said, ‘Since he is incompetent, show him how.’

  He waited, whacking his leg with his whip while the saddle was fixed.

  Schlegel remounted and was trying to get his loose foot in the other stirrup when the commandant slashed the groom at fault across the face with his whip. The groom remained at attention, bleeding from the cut under his eye. The commandant turned away as though nothing had happened. Morgen remained inscrutable. The commandant mounted and waved the grooms away. He stared glassy-eyed as Morgen viewed his horse, a stallion, with suspicion. When he tried to mount it skittered sideways, hooves ringing. When he tried again the horse repeated the move, with a hostile glare. Schlegel suspected it read Morgen’s nervousness. To spare him further embarrassment, Schlegel got down and told Morgen to take his horse, which seemed more docile. He formed a stirrup of his hands and told Morgen to use it. Morgen managed to haul himself up, with the help of the pommel. He sat aloft, looking down uncertainly, while the commandant glared unamused. Schlegel calmed the stallion. The horse repeated its move and he was left hanging on with insufficient leverage to haul himself up. It crossed his mind that the choice of a difficult horse was deliberate on the part of the commandant.

  The commandant scoffed at their display. ‘Fall off and break your necks for all I care.’

  Morgen rolled uncomfortably as they rode out, past huge shapes looming in the mist. Schlegel thought how ridiculous they must look, two men in suits on horseback, accompanying this martinet in full fig. He found keeping his eyes shut lessened the hangover’s vertigo. Gunsels indeed.

  They crossed the unseen river into white, misted countryside. It was at least still cool, which was the best Schlegel could come up with in the way of anything positive. His brain felt corroded, his blood as sluggish as sump oil. The commandant would insist on at least a canter, probably in the hope that one or both of them would fall off. He told Morgen to keep his reins short if he wanted to pull up. Morgen growled, ‘I know what a short rein is.’

  The mist half-lifted, leaving everything below their waists shrouded, making them like ships on a white sea. A line of trees appeared on the horizon; above them what looked like towering pillars of cloud. The commandant halted. ‘See how beautiful,’ he said with a sweep of his arm. ‘As for your business, you have twenty-four hours to complete it. One minute over and I have you thrown out – with or without your wretched little man – or arrested, whichever I decide. You’re not worth the paper you’re written on. Has either of you served a term before?’

  Morgen said six months in detention. The commandant asked what for.

  ‘Insubordination,’ said Morgen.

  ‘Then you know what to expect. We certainly taught those Polish fuckers the meaning of work.’

  The commandant leaned forward, stroking the neck of his mare. Despite the early coolness, he was sweating. He said, ‘I saw my first action in Baghdad at the age of fifteen. At seventeen I was the youngest sergeant in the army in the fourteen–eighteen war.’

  Schlegel didn’t know whether to believe him.

  ‘After that we were nobodies. Hard times. You’re too young to remember. Someone had to keep order, after what we had fought for. The treasurer of my free corps unit was Martin Bormann, and look where he is now. Secretary to the Führer.’

  The commandant looked pleased on behalf of his old
colleague. Fuck, thought Schlegel. Never would he have guessed the man had such connections.

  The commandant was also a big moaner, going on about how hard it had been setting up the garrison, reduced to driving around the countryside in person, helping equip the place, down to pots and pans.

  ‘Barbed-wire fencing, what a nightmare to find that! But we did and made something we could be proud of.’

  Morgen looked comic, smoking on a horse.

  The commandant again asked sarcastically if he was Klein or Richter.

  A strange man, Schlegel thought; stranger than he had seemed the night before. He flinched at the memory of the casual and incisive use of the whip on the groom.

  ‘Did you go to college?’ the commandant asked.

  Schlegel said he had done compulsory labour instead. For the first time the commandant looked interested.

  ‘Tell.’

  A troubled youth, he said, caught shoplifting.

  ‘Shoplifting where?’

  In the big department store KaDeWe. Schlegel didn’t add that his stepfather had fixed for him not to go to prison.

  The commandant was amused. ‘At least you were robbing from the rich. That shows some class. What kind of labour?’

  Building an autobahn, he said. The commandant’s eyes gleamed. ‘Yes, it is good to work with the hands! You understand what I mean. Hope for you yet.’

  Schlegel didn’t say he had been given the easy job of the surveyor’s chain boy, which had required little more than hold the surveyor’s theodolite and sit in a hut.

  The man showed no sign of letting up. At least it stopped them riding. Morgen looked tense at the prospect. What speed was a canter? Twenty-five, 30kph? Schlegel thought he could probably manage, but Morgen? And if either lost their seat would their foot get caught in a stirrup so they ended up being dragged by the horse? It didn’t bear thinking about.

  The mist was lifting. Schlegel saw patches of countryside.

  The commandant told them his own background lay in communal farming. It was how he had met the Reichsführer. Fuck, thought Schlegel, another huge name dropped. Farming was how he had met his wife, the commandant went on. Schlegel struggled to picture her scratching around in the dirt, feeding the chickens. Heini, of course, had been a chicken farmer. In irreverent moments, people made clucking noises at mention of his name.