Men of Snow

by John R Burns

  The officer plonked himself in an armchair, stretching out his long legs before yawning.

  ‘Christ Franz. You always think we’re going East at any moment. At any moment the command will come through and you’ll feel vindicated. Have you ever seen a fucking Russian woman?’

  ‘Have you eaten?’ was Franz’s reply as he unbuttoned the top buttons of his uniform.

  There came another rap on the door and Hauptmann and Fredericks came in. The two officers had rooms further down the corridor and were always looking to join any drinking party.

  ‘We’ve been out all day inspecting fucking road blocks,’ Fredericks complained as he set an armful of beer bottles down.

  ‘We told the men that anything suspicious you fucking shoot it, no matter what.’

  ‘The French are past caring. Their resistance groups are pathetic. They’re all fucking desperate to betray each other to save their own skin. They make me sick,’ Steinhof put in.

  ‘It’s been the same in every war against them.’

  ‘Except Verdun,’ Hauptmann added to Frederick’s remark.

  ‘Open a bottle.’

  ‘Have a brandy.’

  ‘Who has got a cigarette?’

  ‘Where are we going to eat tonight?’

  ‘Who are we going to fuck?’

  Steinhof laughed, ‘We should try Franz’s. He’s keeping her nice and private but I think he should let his friends have a look see.’

  ‘An inspection,’ Hauptmann said.

  ‘A close inspection.’

  ‘To catch a spy.’

  ‘Who might be hiding in her pants.’

  ‘Or up her arse.’

  ‘Or between her tits.’

  ‘A fucking traitoress.’

  Franz was standing by the window ignoring their usual banter.

  ‘But the Russians are coming,’ Steinhof said in a low voice.

  ‘Can they come? That’s the question.’

  ‘Snowmen from the East.’

  ‘So we melt them down.’

  ‘Not until we’ve had something to eat.’

  ‘At Julien’s.’

  ‘Or Frubert’s.’

  Steinhof waited at the door when they were leaving.

  ‘You’re such a fucking prick Franz. Why don’t you request a new posting if you feel so strongly about it? But you won’t. You’re no fucking different to the rest of us. So come on and join us. For once just try and be like everybody else because that’s all you are.’

  ‘I don’t think I will,’ was Franz’s answer.

  ‘Over here we’ve won but I still think you don’t understand that. Good night Brucker,’ were his last words before the three of them went out.

  He pulled a chair to the open window, the lace curtains wafting against his legs as he sat down and lit a cigarette.

  ‘Culture is the soul of a country, especially France. We believe it is the best. That’s why you keep invading us. There’s nothing military about it. You want to overwhelm something you can’t. You know that Herr Brucker. The Germans hate the idea of France’s history. You would very much like to change it but that’s not possible, thankfully not possible,’ he could hear Proustain saying.

  The old man enjoyed putting himself on the edge. He saw it as the challenge. At every opportunity he pushed himself a little closer. His intellect had turned fear into a motivation.

  ‘The systematic approach never frees the spirit sufficiently. You want to organise creativity. You think it can be formulated. Your architecture is a perfect example. It’s so grandiose it becomes a parody of what it’s trying to achieve. Berlin is like a stone machine. It will never move anybody,’ had been his attempt at humour.

  Proustain always wore a tweed jacket and grey slacks, jumper, shirt and tie and even in summer had a woollen shawl around his shoulders. It was as though he wanted to be older than he was.

  ‘I would like to be in a permanent state of convalescence from some illness or other,’ he had said, ‘Then I have every excuse for doing nothing but what I want. So please Herr Brucker, don’t try to be my doctor.’

  He was surrounded by a huge display of artefacts. Every flat surface in his apartment had something displayed on it and then reflected from all the mirrors he had strategically placed.

  ‘You can take anything you want. I say that sincerely, even though I couldn’t stop you. Imagine there is nobody in France that could do that.’

  ‘I don’t care so long as you visit. That’s all I ask. Don’t leave me in uncertainty,’ was Chantelle’s simple request.

  Finally he got up and went over to the phone and asked to be put through to his office.

  ----------------------------------------------------------------

  After twenty minutes the car he had ordered stopped outside an apartment block near the Champs Elysees.

  His driver was ordered to wait for him.

  He glanced along the empty street. It was almost in complete darkness before he went up the steps and pressed the buzzer.

  The hallway was marble floored, his boots sounding loud over its polished surface. The flight of stairs he went down was lit every few yards.

  A guard opened the first metal doors which lead into a wide passageway that had several more green metal doors on either side.

  ‘Are Braun and Schubert here?’ he asked the guard at the second of the security doors.

  ‘They have been here for hours sir,’ was the guard’s clipped answer.

  ‘Any results?’

  ‘Not that I know of sir.’

  In the next passageway it was Braun who opened one of the cell doors. In his open necked shirt and braces he saluted stiffly as Franz entered.

  ‘So?’ was his question.

  Schubert was standing in front of the prisoner and answered, ‘Nothing.’

  ‘That’s not good enough.’

  ‘No sir.’

  ‘He’s a tough shit,’ was from Braun as he shut the heavy cell door.

  ‘And you’re supposed to be able to deal with that.’

  ‘He will tell us.’

  ‘You’ve had him nearly forty eight hours now.’

  ‘Sometimes it can be a little tricky and can take longer.’

  ‘I haven’t got any longer,’ Franz said strongly.

  Braun stepped forward and grabbed the prisoner’s hair to lift up his blooded face.

  ‘I’d say thirtyish, smooth hands, well looked after teeth, had smart shoes. Doesn’t fit the usual profile sir. A bit posh this one.’

  There was a metal beam running from one side of the cell to the other to which the prisoner was strapped by the wrists. He was hanging there naked. His testicles were swollen and a dark purple colour. There was a bullet wound in his right shoulder. Some of his finger nails had been ripped off and there were narrow knife cuts across his chest that had singe lines on either side. One of his feet was twisted at an odd angle. The prisoner’s left eye was swollen closed and there was fresh blood dribbling from his mouth.

  ‘But we’ll get him sir,’ Schubert said.

  ‘I don’t want him dead before he tells us what he knows. That’s essential. I want to know whether this was a random attempt or not. I want to know why he was shooting at me. I might have been the first German coming down the street or there might be something more to it than that and I want to find out what that is. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes sir,’ they both said at the same time.

  ‘I want to know by tomorrow morning,’ he reminded the two of them, ‘I find it hard to believe that this is still going on. Your stay in this city will be drastically shortened unless you get results quickly,’ were his last words before he left the cell.

  Back in his hotel room he tried to sleep, something that never came easily. Ever since he had come to Paris it had been more difficult, only managing fitful, broken periods of unconsciousness.

  Foot patrols sounded out on the street. A few military vehicles would go by. The usual revellers would clatter an
d shout their way along the hotel corridor looking for their rooms.

  Again he heard the sound of the bullet ricocheting off the wall a few inches away from his head as he had walked down the Rue des Invalides. He had always accepted those few inches, the distance of survival or an ending. But on this occasion it had felt more personal.

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  ‘It’s like nothing else. You feel you are nowhere. There is nothing at all to focus on, only the endless snow, white, after white with no horizon, no edge, no point to reach.’

  The sergeant in his hospital bed a few days ago had been describing to some of the officers his experience on the Eastern front. Somehow he had finished up in the luxury of a Parisian ward for the wounded.

  ‘I’ve seen some of my men frozen to death on guard duty, in the morning still standing, covered in snow and ice, blue faced, eyes crystallised. The plains are so flat, without dimensions. It gets so cold everything is a pressure against your body. You don’t think about anything but somehow trying to find some warmth, anything to keep yourself alive. You stop thinking about the war. Out there it doesn’t exist, only the whiteness and the cold, the unbearable cold. Nobody should be there. It’s not a place for humans. The East is a frozen hell. That’s what it is.’

  Franz had absorbed every word. The Eastern front had become a fascination, an obsession, a test, challenge, the ultimate contrast with the boredom of Paris.

  ‘You must be the only soldier in the whole of the German army who wants to be posted there. You must be fucking mad,’ Steinhof had told him one drunken night, ‘How the hell can anybody in their right mind prefer fucking Russia to Paris, Franz, you crazy man? You’re looking for the great sacrifice but it’s not there because nobody will care a shit.’

  He knew that Stalingrad was going to be the significant battle and he wanted to be there. He knew that everything in the East had been drawn into that fight for the city on the Volga. It had to be his battle.

  ---------------------------------------------------------------------

  It was the following lunchtime when he was ordered to go to Colonel Durer’s office. He already understood the order’s reasons. Franz prided himself on always being prepared.

  The Colonel’s office was spacious with high windows behind his large desk.

  ‘I don’t understand it Brucker,’ was the first thing he said after Franz had come to attention and saluted in front of the desk.

  The colonel was another fattened on the riches of Paris, his bald head glistening, his paunch mounded beneath his uniform.

  When Franz made the slightest move he ordered in a raised voice, ‘No. Not at ease. I want you at attention. I want you listening.’

  ‘How can I help sir?’

  The colonel stopped, resting his pudgy hands on the edge of his desk, his voice lowering as he said, ‘Just who the hell do you think you are?’

  Franz made no response, concentrating on the rooftops seen through one of the windows.

  ‘You’ve taken one of my interrogation teams without any agreement, without any order. Braun and Schubert are under my command.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘Not at all Brucker. You have no idea. Your yes sir is meaningless. Who said you could organise a prisoner’s interrogation?’

  ‘I was shot at sir.’

  ‘So?’ the colonel asked, staring at him.

  ‘I wanted to discover the reasons.’

  ‘I would have thought they’re the same for everyone else who has been attacked in this city or anywhere else under occupation. You’re a soldier of the Reich.’

  ‘I wanted to make sure it was nothing more than a random attack.’

  Franz could almost predict the colonel’s every response. The opportunity was for him to push his rank, to remind himself of the powers he imagined he still had.

  ‘And why should you consider it to be anything else?’

  ‘I was not sure sir.’

  ‘It’s arrogance Brucker, sheer self-obsession. Whatever happened, it did not give you the right to use anybody in my interrogation team without my permission. Do you understand that?’

  Franz decided to force the issue and answered, ‘I did not realise I was interfering in any chain of command.’

  ‘Fuck the chain of command. You know what I’m talking about. You’re not the only German officer who has been so full of his own shit that he imagines everything has to be personal.’

  ‘I was only doing what I thought best sir.’

  ‘For you,’ Durer muttered, ‘Nobody else.’

  He picked up his pen and rolled it between his fingers before saying, ‘Your prisoner was shot this morning, ordered by me.’

  Suddenly things had gone in a different direction and Franz was angry.

  ‘Who shot him?’ he asked a little too quickly.

  ‘What the hell does that matter?’

  ‘I would just like to know who shot my prisoner.’

  ‘Dammit Brucker, he wasn’t your fucking prisoner.’

  ‘He was under my observation.’

  ‘Without my orders.’

  ‘I think I have the right to ask who took part in his execution.’

  ‘No Brucker, not at all. You have no right to know anything unless I tell you.’

  ‘I know the prisoner would have talked sir.’

  Durer sat back and sighed.

  ‘Well he’s not going to talk now.’

  ‘No sir,’ was Franz’s curt response.

  ‘Just remember, if you want any questioning done in my cells, using my soldiers, you need my signature at the bottom of the order. Is that clear?’

  ‘It is clear sir.’

  ‘Then you’re dismissed.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ Franz answered loudly as he clipped his heels again, saluted and turned sharply to leave the office.

  He made his way down the busy stairs, this being the headquarters for the central sector of the city. Telephones were ringing, office staff moving from one level to the next. As there was to be a visit from Berlin everything was fast and intense.

  ‘The cold creeps into your bones. The freezing fog makes everything disappear. You see white shadows everywhere. There is no sense of distance, no way of telling how far anything is. You’re always moving blind, that is until the Ruskies suddenly appear like snowmen out of nowhere. Then you know you’re lost. Whatever happens you’re lost.’

  As he walked down the street Franz heard again the voice of the wounded sergeant. Everything about the Eastern front was the strongest provocation, putting colonel Durer and his tantrums into perspective. The only irritation was the loss of the prisoner.

  ‘They call them white lights, strange trails of silvery light in the sky just after a snow fall. You think they’re shell trails but there is no sound. Then they’re gone and like everything there you think you’ve imagined them, until the next time. Everything is changed. There is no horizon, no edge to anything. You’re told you’re advancing when it feels you’re going round in circles and when you stop there is only the noise of the frozen snow ringing in your ears, the sound of the earth shrinking.’

  All of them had listened intently. For once his fellow officers had offered no cynicism, no easy remarks because they knew that the Eastern front was inevitable. Franz was confident that soon he and his men would be transferred to where the Reich was fighting for its existence, a real fight, something that he desired more than anything.

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  It had started with a routine search. Proustain’s apartment had rooms full of antiques and art work. The old man had appeared diffident, even encouraging. On Franz’s second visit it had seemed as though he had been expected.

  ‘You have come either to admire or relieve me of some of my treasures,’ he had said casually.

  The search had been through the whole block, a new policy to try random inspections of certain streets and their
apartments.

  ‘Or maybe captain I might be presumptuous by suggesting you are here because you want to be.’

  The rooms were decorated in a mid-18th century style, something that Franz had imagined before being posted to the city, deep gold and crimson with ornate furniture and high windows, the French style, decadent and baroque.

  ‘Or maybe you have heard about my criminal activities. I have managed to store away real coffee and English tea and of course the finest brandies.’

  And Proustain himself had appeared like an old professor with his usual thin glasses, corduroy trousers and jacket with a buttoned shirt and floral tie.

  ‘We might as well be honest, right from the start. Don’t you agree captain?’

  The voice had been soft, German words moulded between thick, moist lips and sounding always suggestive, ingratiating.

  ‘I appreciate your visit, now you are alone.’

  ‘And what if I had come for something that had caught my eye?’ Franz had asked.

  Proustain understood the trick and thought carefully before saying, ‘Whatever you offered it could never be enough.’

  ‘Who mentioned offering anything?’

  ‘Oh I see,’ he had answered, followed by a tentative smile, ‘You imply the conqueror has come for his prize.’

  ‘Prizes.’

  ‘More than one.’

  ‘Or all of it.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ the old man had sighed, ‘and how could I refuse? Why would I refuse? Being I think a sensible man, even an experienced one, I would bow to your authority and invite you to help yourself.’

  ‘Very sensible monsieur.’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘But not very imaginative.’

  ‘At this moment I think reality has more significance. But please sit down. Would you like to partake of one of the results of my criminal activities?’

  The tea had been golden and full flavoured, something Franz had not tasted in a long time.

  ‘So everything here in your apartment belongs to you?’ had been one of his questions.

  ‘Shall we say I am looking after all of it, which I am glad to do. The rest of the family moved south just at the start of the war.’