by Irwin Shaw
Of late, Garbrecht had to admit, Peterson had not seemed quite so enthusiastic. He had seemed rather baffled and sometimes hurt and weary. In the beginning, his naïveté had spread to cover the Russians in a rosy blanket, too. The assignments he gave to Garbrecht to execute in the Russian zone were so routine and so comparatively innocent, that if Garbrecht had had a conscience he would have hesitated at taking payment for their fulfillment.
Peterson was smiling broadly when he came in, looking like a schoolboy who has just been promoted to the first team on a football squad. He was a tall, heavy young man with an excited, swift manner of talking. “Glad to see you, Garbrecht,” he said. “I was afraid I was going to miss you. I’ve been busy as a bartender on Saturday night, hand-carrying orders all over the place, packing, saying good-bye …”
“Good-bye?” Garbrecht said, shaken by a small tremor of fear. “Where are you going?”
“Home.” Peterson pulled out three drawers from his desk and started emptying them in a swift jumble. “The United States of America.”
“But I thought,” Garbrecht said, “that you had decided to stay. You said your wife and child were coming over and …”
“I know …” Peterson threw a whole batch of mimeographed papers light-heartedly into the trash basket. “I changed my mind.” He stopped working on the drawers and looked soberly at Garbrecht. “They’re not coming here. I decided I didn’t want my child to grow up in Europe.” He sat down heavily, staring over Garbrecht’s head at the molding around the ceiling. “In fact,” he said, “I don’t think I want to hang around Europe any more myself. In the beginning I thought I could do a lot of good here. Now …” He shrugged. “They’d better try someone else. I’d better go back to America and clear my head for a while. It’s simpler in a war. You know whom you’re fighting and you have a general idea about where he is. Now …” Once more the shrug.
“Maybe I’m too stupid for a job like this,” he continued. “Or maybe I expected too much. I’ve been here a year, and everything seems to be getting worse and worse. I feel as though I’m sliding downhill all the time. Slowly, not very perceptibly … but downhill. Maybe Germany has always struck everybody the same way. Maybe that’s why so many people have always committed suicide here. I’m going to get out of here before I wake up one morning and say to myself, ‘By God, they have the right idea.’”
Suddenly he stood up, swinging his big feet in their heavy army shoes down to the floor with a commanding crash. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll take you in to see Major Dobelmeir. He’s going to replace me.” Peterson opened the door for Garbrecht, and they went out into the anteroom with the four desks and the girls in uniform typing. Peterson led the way. “I think the United States Army is going to begin to get its money’s worth out of you now, Garbrecht,” Peterson said, without looking back. “Dobelmeir is quite a different kettle of fish from that nice, simple young Captain Peterson.”
Garbrecht stared at the back of Peterson’s head. So, he thought coldly, he wasn’t so completely fooled by me, after all. Maybe it’s good he’s going.
But then Peterson opened the door to one of the rooms along the hall and they went in, and Garbrecht took one look at the major’s leaf and the heavy, brooding, suspicious face, and he knew that he was wrong; it would have been much better if Peterson had stayed.
Peterson introduced them and the Major said, “Sit down,” in flat heavy-voiced German, and Peterson said, “Good luck, I have to go now,” and left. The Major looked down at the papers on his desk and read them stolidly, for what seemed to Garbrecht like a very long time. Garbrecht felt the tension beginning again in his muscles, as it had in Seedorf’s room. Everything, he thought, gets worse and worse, more and more complicated.
“Garbrecht,” the Major said, without looking up, “I have been reading your reports.” He did not say anything else, merely continued to read slowly and effortfully, his eyes covered, his heavy chin creasing in solid fat as he bent his head over the desk.
“Yes?” Garbrecht said finally, because he could no longer stand the silence.
For a moment, Dobelmeir did not answer. Then he said, “They aren’t worth ten marks, all of them together, to anybody. The United States Government ought to sue you for obtaining money on false pretenses.”
“I am very sorry,” Garbrecht said hurriedly, “I thought that that is what was wanted, and I …”
“Don’t lie.” The Major finally lifted his head and stared fishily at him.
“My dear Major …”
“Keep quiet,” the Major said evenly. “We now institute a new regime. You can do all right if you produce. If you don’t, you can go find another job. Now we know where we stand.”
“Yes, sir,” said Garbrecht.
“I should not have to teach you your business at this late date,” the Major said. “There is only one way in which an operation like this can pay for itself; only one rule to follow. All our agents must act as though the nation on which they are spying is an active enemy of the United States, as though the war has, in fact, begun. Otherwise the information you gather has no point, no focus, no measurable value. When you bring me information it must be information of an enemy who is probing our line for weak spots, who is building up various depots of supplies and troops and forces in specific places, who is choosing certain specific fields on which to fight the crucial battles. I am not interested in random, confusing gossip. I am only interested in indications of the disposition of the enemy’s strength and indications of his aggressive intentions toward us. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” said Garbrecht.
The Major picked up three sheets of clipped-together papers. “This is your last report,” he said. He ripped the papers methodically in half and then once more in half and threw them on the floor. “That is what I think of it.”
“Yes, sir,” said Garbrecht. He knew the sweat was streaming down into his collar and he knew that the Major must have noticed it and was probably sourly amused at it, but there was nothing he could do to stop it.
“This office has sent out its last chambermaid-gossip report,” the Major said. “From now on, we will send out only useful military information, or nothing at all. I’m not paying you for the last two weeks’ work. You haven’t earned it. Get out of here. And don’t come back until you have something to tell me.”
He bent down once more over the papers on his desk. Garbrecht stood up and slowly went out the door. He knew that the Major did not look up as he closed the door behind him.
Greta wasn’t home, and he had to stand outside her door in the cold all evening because the janitress refused to recognize him and let him in. Greta did not get back till after midnight, and then she came up with an American officer in a closed car, and Garbrecht had to hide in the shadows across the street while the American kissed Greta clumsily again and again before going off. Garbrecht hurried across the broken pavement of the street to reach Greta before she retreated into the house.
Greta could speak English and worked for the Americans as a typist and filing clerk, and perhaps something else, not quite so official, in the evenings. Garbrecht did not inquire too closely. Greta was agreeable enough and permitted him to use her room when he was in the American zone, and she always seemed to have a store of canned food in her cupboard, gift of her various uniformed employers, and she was quite generous and warm-hearted about the entire arrangement. Greta had been an energetic patriot before the defeat, and Garbrecht had met her when she visited the hospital where he was lying with his arm freshly severed after the somber journey back from Russia. Whether it was patriotism, pity, or perversity that had moved her, Garbrecht did not know, nor did he inquire too deeply; at any rate, Greta had remained a snug anchorage in the wild years that had passed, and he was fond of her.
“Hello,” he said, as he came up behind her. She was struggling with the lock, and turned abruptly, as though frightened.
“Oh,” she said. “I didn’t think you’d be he
re tonight.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t get in touch with you.”
She opened the door, and he went in with her. She unlocked the door of her own room, which was on the ground floor, and slammed it irritably behind her. Ah, he thought unhappily, things are bad here, too, tonight.
He sighed. “What is it?” he said.
“Nothing,” she said. She started to undress, methodically, and without any of the usual graceful secrecy she ordinarily managed even in the small drab room.
“Can I be of any help?” Garbrecht asked.
Greta stopped pulling off her stockings and looked thoughtfully at Garbrecht. Then she shook her head and yanked at the heel of the right stocking. “You could,” she said, contemptuously. “But you won’t.”
Garbrecht squinted painfully at her. “How do you know?” he asked.
“Because you’re all the same,” Greta said coldly. “Weak. Quiet. Disgusting.”
“What is it?” he asked. “What would you want me to do?” He would have preferred it if Greta had refused to tell him, but he knew he had to ask.
Greta worked methodically on the other stocking. “You ought to get four or five of your friends, the ex-heroes of the German Army,” she said disdainfully, “and march over to Freda Raush’s house and tear her clothes off her back and shave her head and make her walk down the street that way.”
“What?” Garbrecht sat up increduously. “What are you talking about?”
“You were always yelling about honor,” Greta said loudly. “Your honor, the Army’s honor, Germany’s honor.”
“What’s that got to do with Freda Raush?”
“Honor is something Germans have only when they’re winning, is that it?” Greta pulled her dress savagely over her shoulders. “Disgusting.”
Garbrecht shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “I thought Freda was a good friend of yours.”
“Even the French,” Greta said, disregarding him, “were braver. They shaved their women’s heads when they caught them.…”
“All right, all right,” Garbrecht said wearily. “What did Freda do?”
Greta looked wildly at him, her hair disarranged and tumbled around her full shoulders, her large, rather fat body shivering in cold and anger in her sleazy slip. “Tonight,” she said, “she invited the Lieutenant I was with and myself to her house.…”
“Yes,” said Garbrecht, trying to concentrate very hard.
“She is living with an American captain.”
“Yes?” said Garbrecht, doubtfully. Half the girls Greta knew seemed to be living with American captains, and the other half were trying to. That certainly could not have infuriated Greta to this wild point of vengeance.
“Do you know what his name is?” Greta asked rhetorically. “Rosenthal! A Jew. Freda!”
Garbrecht sighed, his breath making a hollow, sorrowful sound in the cold midnight room. He looked up at Greta, who was standing over him, her face set in quivering, tense lines. She was usually such a placid, rather stupid, and easygoing girl that moments like this came as a shocking surprise.
“You will have to find someone else,” Garbrecht said wearily, “if you want to have Freda’s head shaved. I am not in the running.”
“Of course,” Greta said icily. “I knew you wouldn’t be.”
“Frankly,” Garbrecht said, trying to be reasonable with her, “I am a little tired of the whole question of the Jews. I think we ought to drop it, once and for all. It was all right for a while, but I think we’ve probably just about used it all up by now.”
“Ah,” Greta said, “keep quiet. I should have known better than to expect anything from a cripple.”
They both were silent then. Greta continued undressing with contemptuous asexual familiarity, and Garbrecht slowly took his clothes off and got into bed, while Greta, in a black rayon nightgown that her American Lieutenant had got for her, put her hair up in curlers before the small, wavy mirror. Garbrecht looked at her reflection in the mirror and remembered the nervous, multiple reflections in the cracked mirror in Seedorf’s office.
He closed his stinging eyes, feeling the lids trembling jumpily. He touched the folded, raw scar on his right shoulder. As long as he lived, he probably would never get over being shocked at the strange, brutal scar on his own body. And he would never get over being shocked when anybody called him a cripple. He would have to be more diplomatic with Greta. She was the only girl he was familiar with, and occasionally there was true warmth and blessed hours of forgetfulness in her bed. It would be ridiculous to lose that over a silly political discussion in which he had no real interest at all. Girls were hard to get these days. During the war it was better. You got a lot of girls out of pity. But pity went out at Rheims. And any German, even a whole, robust one, had a hard time competing with the cigarettes and chocolates and prestige of the victors. And for a man with one arm … It had been a miserable day, and this was a fitting, miserable climax to it.
Greta put out the light and got aggressively into bed, without touching him. Tentatively he put his hand out to her. She didn’t move. “I’m tired,” she said. “I’ve had a long day. Good night.”
In a few moments she was asleep.
Garbrecht lay awake a long time, listening to Greta snore; a wavering, troubling reflection from a street light outside played on his lids from the small mirror across the room.
As he approached the house in which Seedorf kept his headquarters, Garbrecht realized that he had begun to hurry his pace a little, that he was actually looking forward to the meeting. This was the fourth week that he had reported to the fat ex-Captain, and he smiled a little to himself as he reminded himself of how affectionately he had begun to regard Seedorf. Seedorf had not been at all demanding. He had listened with eager interest to each report of Garbrecht’s meetings with Mikhailov and Dobelmeir, had chuckled delightedly here and there, slapped his leg in appreciation of one point or another, and had shrewdly and humorously invented plausible little stories, scraps of humor, to give first to the Russian, then to the American. Seedorf, who had never met either of them, seemed to understand them both far better than Garbrecht did, and Garbrecht had risen steadily in the favor of both Captain Mikhailov and Major Dobelmeir since he had given himself to Seedorf’s coaching.
As Garbrecht opened the door of Seedorf’s headquarters, he remembered with a little smile the sense of danger and apprehension with which he had first come there.
He did not have to wait long at all. Miss Renner, the blonde who had first talked to him on the street, opened the door to the ex-Captain’s room almost immediately.
Seedorf was obviously in high spirits. He was beaming and moving up and down in front of his desk with little, mincing, almost dancing steps. “Hello, hello,” he said warmly, as Garbrecht came into the room. “Good of you to come.”
Garbrecht never could make out whether this was sly humor on Seedorf’s part, or perfectly automatic good manners, this pretense that Garbrecht had any choice in the matter.
“Wonderful day,” Seedorf said. “Absolutely wonderful day. Did you hear the news?”
“What news?” Garbrecht asked cautiously.
“The first bomb!” Seedorf clasped his hands delightedly. “This afternoon at two-thirty the first bomb went off in Germany. Stuttgart! A solemn day. A day of remembrance! After 1918 it took twelve years before the Germans started any real opposition to the Allies. And now … less than a year and a half after the surrender … the first bomb! Delightful!” He beamed at Garbrecht. “Aren’t you pleased?” he asked.
“Very,” said Garbrecht diplomatically. He was not fond of bombs. Maybe for a man with two arms, bombs might have an attraction, but for him …
“Now we can really go to work.” Seedorf hurled himself forcefully into his leather chair behind the desk and stared piercingly out at Garbrecht. “Until now, it hasn’t meant very much. Really only developing an organization. Trying out the parts. Seeing w
ho could work and who couldn’t. Instituting necessary discipline. Practice, more than anything else. Now the maneuvers are over. Now we move onto the battlefield!”
Professional soldiers, Garbrecht thought bitterly, his new-found peace of mind already shaken, they couldn’t get the jargon of their calling out of their thinking. Maneuvers, battlefields … The only accomplishment they seemed to be able to recognize was the product of explosion, the only political means they really understood and relished, death.
“Lieutenant,” Seedorf said, “we have been testing you, too. I am glad to say,” he said oratorically, “we have decided that you are dependable. Now you really begin your mission. Next Tuesday at noon Miss Renner will meet you. She will take you to the home of a friend of ours. He will give you a package. You will carry it to an address that Miss Renner will give you at the time. I will not hide from you that you will be in a certain danger. The package you will carry will include a timing mechanism that will go into the first bomb to be exploded in the new war against the Allies in Berlin.…”
Seedorf seemed to be far away and his voice distant and strange. It had been too good to be true, Garbrecht thought dazedly, the easygoing, undangerous, messenger-boy life that he had thought he was leading. Merely a sly, deadly game that Seedorf had been playing, testing him.