by Chris Petit
The commandant said, ‘Once there was a future to this place. Now it is little more than a refugee camp. I say this with no side, gentlemen; they are the facts. Now let’s ride.’
He wheeled his mare and was off, racing away and back, a man exhilarated, circling them, urging them on, telling them not to be girls.
Schlegel caught Morgen’s look of resolve as he punched his heels into his mount’s side and set off at a brisk trot, barely in control. The commandant continued to circle, shouting encouragement.
Schlegel sensed his horse neither liked nor trusted him. He reached a canter and shut his eyes, feeling the air on his face, hearing the heavy pound of hooves. He opened his eyes, felt briefly better. The ground raced. Morgen was off to his left, ahead. The commandant had split away and was riding hard towards the trees.
The mist remained in patches, making holes of the landscape. Far away strange insubstantial shapes hovered. They looked huge – the size of aircraft hangars – rendered almost invisible by their transparency.
He splashed through marshier ground. Reeds and a lake came into view. Watchtowers rose in the distance and a line of telegraph poles counted its way along the horizon. The commandant disappeared into white.
Schlegel’s horse had a way of twisting his neck at speed, testing his limited skill. There was disobedience and misbehaviour too. At one point the brute veered off to rampage through the shallows of the lake. Schlegel tried to pull up but they careered on. He struggled to take control, which the horse resented, and went into a spin, splashing and twirling, bucking in an effort to unseat him. When he realised the horse was enjoying itself at his expense, he stopped fighting it. Whereupon the stallion grew deceptively docile, only to charge off again, across country in the direction of the commandant.
His horse insisted on running himself out. The horizon jumped and blurred. Morgen charged out of a patch of mist, being thrown around in the saddle, the most inelegant show of horsemanship Schlegel had ever witnessed. Worse, Morgen was holding on one-handed, using his free arm to make windmills, and laughing like an idiot.
From the other direction came the distant whinny of the commandant’s horse, a cry of alarm sensed by Schlegel’s horse. Schlegel saw the commandant’s mare rise on her hind legs and the man lift one arm in what looked like a valediction. With the remaining mist and speed of the gallop it was hard to make out. There was no time to think because Morgen’s horse was charging towards him, riderless.
Schlegel followed the direction it had come from. He called and got no reply.
He followed the hoofprints, angry scars in the boggy ground. Morgen eventually answered. Schlegel found him on his back, blowing smoke.
‘Soft landing,’ Morgen said.
‘What happened?’
‘The nag and I were getting on. I fancied a smoke at speed.’
‘Didn’t you think to stop first?’
‘It was lighting the smoke at speed I fancied, but I had to use both hands, which was where it went wrong and I slipped in the saddle. Dropped my lighter. It was quite a good one.’
Schlegel’s stallion was breathing hard, flanks working like bellows, obedient at last.
Morgen clambered to his feet. ‘No bones broken. Look, here he comes.’
The commandant emerged out of the start of the day’s heat haze, walking his mare and leading Morgen’s horse.
Looking like he had seen a ghost, thought Schlegel.
The commandant made no acknowledgement as he approached, so preoccupied he gave no sign of seeing them. He wordlessly handed Morgen his horse, showed no concern as to how he was, then pointed away from the direction he had come and said, ‘We take the bridle path back.’
He led the way with Schlegel following. Morgen took up the rear. Schlegel watched the hypnotic rise and fall of the man’s back. A gurgling brook ran beside the path. At one point the commandant halted and held up his arm for them to do the same. A cyclist flashed past on a drop-handlebar bike, wearing a fancy riding kit, like a real racer, and in the blur of his passing Schlegel recognised Krick.
Outside his house the commandant tethered his horse to the fence, told them to do the same and wait in the hall while he changed; Groenke would come shortly to collect them for the shoot. He called out to ask if anyone was around. His wife appeared at the top of the stairs but didn’t come down. He shouted up to say the gardener should return the horses. Schlegel noted that the commandant waited for his wife to disappear before going upstairs.
The hall was well appointed, with polished parquet and oriental runners. Morgen inspected an oil painting and grunted. Schlegel, in the grip of his hangover, was grateful for the pause. His head and his legs ached.
A big man in civilians wandered through the front door, announced himself as Groenke and asked if the Old Man was about. Morgen said upstairs. A burst of children’s laughter came from above.
Groenke looked at ease. The commandant’s wife made her entrance, descending with the light behind her, coming from the long window which made a feature of the stairs. She seemed to make a point of appearing plain, when she wasn’t, and modest, which Schlegel suspected she wasn’t either.
She greeted Groenke and ignored them. She briefly left and returned with samples of materials and said, ‘That’s the one I want. That would look best.’ She looked at Schlegel and Morgen and asked, ‘What do you two think?’
They could only approve. Having come to her attention, she said they must sign the visitors’ book on the hall table, which everyone who came to the house had to, however high or humble.
She showed them where the Reichsführer had signed on different occasions. ‘And there is Hanns Johst, the poet laureate, who came on one occasion with the Reichsführer.’
She flicked the pages. ‘Oswald Pohl. Pohl again.’
So the commandant’s boss was a houseguest, thought Schlegel. The commandant seemed extraordinarily well connected for such a provincial posting.
Staff were starting to turn up in twos and threes. It all appeared very informal. Some came through the front door without knocking. Others arrived by the kitchen. The commandant’s wife made a point of issuing cheerful greetings. She held out a pen for Morgen to sign the book. Schlegel couldn’t decide whether he was amused or nervous when Morgen signed himself ‘Richter, Post Office’. He gave nothing away as he handed the pen to Schlegel, who saw further up the page Fegelein had written ‘Chancellery’ next to his name, adding, ‘A privilege and pleasure as always.’
The commandant’s wife was discussing the order of the day with the servants. Schlegel heard the commandant coming downstairs, calling for Groenke. He turned away from signing as two women came through the door.
Until that moment everything was normal or ordinary, or whatever you wanted to call it, thought Schlegel. Time stood still and in the detonation of a moment everything changed.
The woman on the right was Sybil.
Her hair was shorter and she was dressed plainly but it was unmistakably her.
The world expanded and settled again with the commandant suddenly among them, dressed in a fancy shooting waistcoat full of pouches and pockets in unlikely places, being loud with Groenke and upstaging his wife.
Schlegel, in shock, replayed the moment, and her look of terror as their eyes met. The commandant’s wife had greeted her and received a good morning as Sybil split off and ran upstairs.
He was in a mind to follow, regardless of the threat he seemed to pose. He started to go up, asking for the toilet, and was told in no uncertain terms by the commandant’s wife that the guest lavatory was down the hall, and she pointed him to it.
Schlegel sat in the toilet, composing himself. He could not tell whether Morgen had seen her. He questioned his judgement. Had he projected her onto someone else? No, it was her voice.
He made a show of flushing the toilet and washing his hands and stepped back into the hall, light-headed. The commandant was grumbling about being kept waiting.
An open wagon was
parked outside, the horses gone. The commandant, wearing dark goggles, drove them to the armoury where more men waited. All wore civilian dress and knew their way around guns, especially a loose-limbed blond beast who moved with a hunter’s grace.
The commandant broke the barrel of their guns before handing them over, accompanied by a belt of shells.
Hearty shoulder slaps between the men contrasted with the absence of any introduction for them. Fegelein strolled in and clicked his heels. Schlegel’s spirits sank. He could not shake the feeling that the man had been sent to watch them.
Groenke sat next to the commandant, who drove, with Schlegel and Morgen in the back, and the others followed in a second car.
‘Bitch of a heatwave,’ said Groenke, holding his hand out to catch the slipstream.
Schlegel thought back to visits to Sybil in hiding and her threatening his young life with sudden, incomprehensible joy. His hangover came in waves and the exultation of seeing her gave way to a crushing hopelessness.
Two crows rose out of the trees, black wings flapping. Two shots punched out. One continued to rise while the other balled and fell, leaving feathers in its wake. It hit the ground past Schlegel, bounced once, and lay there, wings beating uselessly.
Schlegel was at the end of the line. Next to him was the blond beast, who appeared capable of nailing anything. Groenke and the commandant were fair shots, unlike Schlegel, who aimed to miss because he disliked killing. Fegelein shot as he would have expected, a natural sportsman. Morgen looked bored and barely bothered to raise his gun.
A couple of stray pheasants flew out of the ground, their panicky, low trajectories barely getting them up before they were brought down in a hail of buckshot.
The blond beast amused himself by drawing a bead on the beaters. The commandant joked that the men were performing a useful task, but Schlegel saw that the two men annoyed each other. The beaters were prisoners, dressed in shabby clothes distinguished by their markings.
The commandant was now sunniness itself, sharing a hip flask with Groenke, wisecracking, toasting and congratulating spectacular shots. The blond beast sometimes fired from the hip, and was rewarded with whistles and cheers; jeers on the rare occasions he missed. He had a soft, almost baby face, and funny eyes. Despite his joker’s manner, Schlegel suspected he was a hard man; what Morgen would call a proper specimen.
The shoot was competitive and casual to the point of laziness. Whether out of protocol or deference, the commandant had been allowed to claim the first bird and Schlegel watched the wood pigeon cartwheel down as the commandant removed the cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth and whooped like an excited schoolboy.
They stopped often for what the commandant called a drinks break. The men all had flasks. Schlegel, the worse for wear, was grateful none offered. The talk was all man-to-man, resting easy with crooked guns.
Fegelein said, ‘Nice to think of the little women tucked up safe at home.’
‘Who was it who shot a beater after a disappointing bag?’ Groenke asked. The question sounded like part of a repertoire saved for every shoot. ‘Was it you, Palitsch?’
The blond beast gave a shy smile and said he only did head jobs. The men roared with laughter, except the commandant, who glared. Schlegel suspected the moment had registered with Morgen, despite him giving the appearance of being entranced by the local insect life.
They moved on. A panicky whirr of wings announced the flight of the bird which moved across the line towards Schlegel. The other guns left it. He had the bird in his sights, felt the start of the trigger squeeze and stopped – arrested by the notion that it was a symbol of his and Sybil’s fate. He fired low and late. The other guns, which had been tracing the bird’s arc, let loose, apart from Palitsch whose gun was aimed at Schlegel’s head, in an easy way, like he was admonishing him for his miss. It didn’t stop him from firing, close enough for Schlegel to feel the shot pass his head. He turned and watched the bird fly on, then falter.
The dogs couldn’t find it, which left him with the stupid hope that it had got away.
When it got too hot they returned to the cars. Fegelein drifted on the edge of the group, a casual sinister presence, tailing Morgen. Schlegel presumed Palitsch was a maniac. How close had he been to shooting him, or was it a garrison joke? Barely nine and Schlegel felt done in. Groenke made a point of escorting him back to the car. He gripped his elbow and said, ‘Your friend, whatever his name is, ha-ha, is not popular after what he did in Buchenwald. Don’t let him shit in the soup as he did there.’ He gave Schlegel’s elbow an extra squeeze.
Back at the armoury someone was shooting inside. It was the commandant’s adjutant, Juppe, passing the time with target practice.
It was obvious he was waiting for them and equally clear what the commandant intended. Juppe was duly assigned as their escort for the day. They would be given no leeway. It explained why they had been dragged out riding and hunting. The commandant wanted them under watch. Morgen protested.
‘The choice is not yours,’ the commandant said. ‘While you are in the garrison I am responsible for your safety.’
‘Does that mean we are not safe?’
‘Juppe will be with you at all times.’
The men drifted off, leaving them stuck with Juppe, who remained formal and correct, however hard an impatient Morgen pushed him.
‘Why don’t we amuse ourselves?’
Juppe repeated his lines. ‘The commandant demands you be escorted so you don’t get lost.’
They had no choice. It wasn’t as though they had anything to do until returning to the post office. Schlegel’s hangover refused to budge.
They started with the garrison metal works. Juppe had all the dull statistics, recited at length. He had no small talk and resisted any questioning or being provoked into personal observation. After the metal works it was the dairy and the general concession where the garrison could buy its provisions. A theatre. Library. Sports facilities, including gym and pitches for the local football league. A swimming pool was in the process of being built.
Then it was to the leather factory where they saw Groenke again, down on the shop floor among the workers. He enjoyed shouting encouragement, offering cheery greetings to supervisors, admiringly inspecting an elaborate piece of leather tooling, going around opening windows, saying let’s try and get some air in here.
Groenke was asked what they produced. From the way he and Juppe interacted, Schlegel could see that it wasn’t the first time this sort of time-wasting had gone on.
‘Leather for the military. Boots, panniers, satchels, rifle straps. There was a rush order recently for binocular cases, but we still find time to make furniture. We have designers who do a nice line in leather chairs. If you want one we can arrange to have it shipped. For the commandant’s birthday we made him an exceptionally fine saddle in the American style.’
Schlegel supposed Groenke about forty, one of those tough nuts who made a point of an irritating bonhomie, which assumed everyone saw the world as he did. He had changed since the shoot. Everything about his appearance spoke of a certain quality. The high leather boots were both practical and ostentatious, with lacing all the way to the knee, featuring what Schlegel was astonished to note were real silver cleats. The man was a walking advertisement for his work. A kid waistcoat, unnecessary in the heat, looked as soft as chamois. A wide studded belt was obviously handmade, as was the broad watch strap. On his other wrist he wore an elaborately braided leather bracelet. There were even leather patches on the knees of his trousers!
He gave them his little lecture, telling them proudly how he had qualified as a master shoemaker as part of a prisoner initiative to retrain for civilian life. Schlegel wondered why such a brute wasn’t in the army.
The morning went on like that, with Juppe never less than thorough without giving anything away. Morgen wondered aloud if it was his job to point out the obvious. Juppe didn’t laugh, even out of politeness.
‘What’s
that strange smell?’ Morgen asked.
‘Poles,’ said Juppe, with a shrill laugh.
The smell was of animals being slaughtered. Schlegel knew it from Berlin and Morgen would too. The garrison had its own slaughterhouse, as it did everything else, and they weren’t going to be spared an inspection.
It stood behind a high wall, like in Berlin. Closer to, they could hear the nervous, lowing animals. Inside, an arcade ran down one side of the building with the killing sheds to the right. They saw herded cattle waiting, heard the dry cough of the stun gun.
It was a large professional outfit, though nothing like the scale of Berlin. Men in hats and blood-spattered aprons supervised. The smell of blood, mixed with his hangover, made Schlegel nauseous. Juppe was reciting: how many cattle, sheep and pigs. The garrison abattoir accounted for the excellence of the meat in the officers’ mess where they would have lunch. They passed a line of butchered carcasses hanging ready for dispatch.
The arcade led into a large courtyard with several regular workshops unconnected to the slaughterhouse. The air outside was only marginally less foul. Morgen lit up.
The courtyard was a dead end and they had to pass back through the arcade. The butchered carcasses were being added to by a gang with trolleys to carry the animals, which were hauled up using pulleys. Their supervisor was a small man with a long sharp knife, used like a conductor’s baton.
The man was depressingly familiar. Morgen had spotted him too.
It was Sepp from the Berlin slaughterhouse. Sepp had once skinned humans for sport.
The biggest shock was that Sepp was still alive. The last Schlegel had heard, execution was on the cards for the lot of them.
Morgen’s frustration spilled over.
‘I thought you were supposed to be dead.’
Sepp smirked, apparently unsurprised, almost as though he had known they were coming.
‘No shortage of death,’ he said, ‘but a dearth of master butchers, so here we are, on reprieve.’