The Turncoat

by Siegfried Lenz

  Medical corpsmen often came upon fresh corpses with wet pants.

  • THREE •

  Proska thought, I don’t care what happens next, I can’t hold out in this overturned railroad car any longer. Maybe they even watched the wreck. If they did, I’ll bet they don’t feel any need to verify that everyone who got blown up with the train is dead. They probably withdrew from the scene a long time ago. But who knows with these guys? My spine hurts, it’s trembling as if someone strummed it. If I could only stand up straight and stretch. My rifle seems unharmed—it lets me chamber a round. Now I just have to get out of this repulsive crate. If they shoot at me, at least I have good cover. Besides, the sun must be about to come up. Who knows what would have happened if I hadn’t fallen asleep. While they nod off, the Lord protects his own. Or am I fooling myself? When you get right down to it, am I just imagining I’m here? What a laugh, really. I dare to doubt my survival even though my spinal column hurts and my bladder’s about to burst. Shall I act like the people who scatter earth on their heads when they feel themselves doubting their existence? I’ve got to get out of here!

  The assistant tilted his head back and gazed at the broken compartment window, which was immediately above him. He stretched out both hands, grasped the metal frame, and pulled himself up. To begin with, he could see nothing but the sky, and its boundless respectability encouraged him to thrust his head through the opening and venture a look at his immediate surroundings. First he became aware of some treetops, spruces, then of their trunks, and finally, as his eyes slid lower and lower, the army of birches, shivering in the early morning fog, and the tenacious, eccentric undergrowth of wild blackberry tendrils. The railroad tracks, blown off the crossties by the upward force of the exploding dynamite, lay bent and twisted like thin wax candles.

  Suddenly, Proska heard someone say, “Pjerunje! There one still alive.”

  He turned around at once and spotted, behind a willow shrub, a tall, thin soldier. He stepped out and slowly approached Proska with his rifle braced against his hip.

  “Where did you come from?”asked Proska, amazed.

  “Gleiwitz,” said the lanky soldier, grinning.

  “I mean, what are you doing here? Is your outfit posted nearby?”

  “You really alive? You mighty lucky! Guy sitting at front got squished like bug between tin cans. And engine driver grew wings and flew into tree, head first. What have happen? Well, one thing sure: great big boom.”

  “Are they all dead?” Proska asked. His question sounded as though he still didn’t believe he was alive.

  The tall soldier nodded. He had big, somewhat protruding ears, a cocked nose (so to speak), and brown eyes. It was obviously not easy for him to see out from under his steel helmet, which was at least two sizes too big. He stopped in front of the overturned railroad car and said, “Now we must hurry up. Run away, fast as possible. Everything else schwistko jedno. Get out quick! You have rifle?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then bring with and come.”

  While Proska was squeezing himself through the window, the other peered up at the treetops and whistled through his teeth.

  “You see something?”

  “There,” the tall soldier said, pointing his rifle barrel at two spruces. “They sit up there and watch while train blows up.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Hurry up, pjerunje!”

  “But where can we go? Wouldn’t it be safer to stay here?”

  “Yes, but only afternoon. From two to eight.”

  “So what are you doing here now?”

  “Guard detail for railroad track.”

  “By yourself?”

  “Five other man and corporal in charge. Not of railroad track, of us.”

  Proska braced his weapon against his hip and took two steps on the soft ground. Then he said, “Actually, I should stay here. I have to go on, I have to rejoin my unit.”

  The soldier from Upper Silesia got angry. He replied, “Well, you stay or you come! Next train pass in maybe three hour. By then, you could already have hundred—” With his index finger he poked his helmet and his chest alternately several times.

  “Where are you bringing me?”

  “Come now.”

  Proska clambered back into the car and returned after two minutes with his haversack and the package for Captain Kilian.

  “Should we just leave all this the way it is?”

  “Mobile railroad patrol come and put everything in order. We telephone right away. Is enough.”

  The tall soldier went ahead. He dragged his left leg a little, as though his boot were too tight. Proska looked at the seat of the man’s pants and thought, This guy has no ass at all. I’d like to know how he keeps his pants up. People with no ass look best in suits. And they’re not to be trusted.

  They silently cleared themselves a way through the thick underbrush and soon reached a narrow, well-trodden path. Proska couldn’t help noticing, on both sides of the path, gigantic, uprooted trees, dependable hazelnut switches, and thick weeds. Pure, unsullied wilderness, a patch of earth no human hand had ever altered. It was hard even for death to slip through here; if it scorched one life, a thousand new lives rose up against it. No doubt it was high time to lend death some assistance in this prideful district, for everything that breathes is great only insofar as it yearns for the abyss. Here, however, there seemed to be no abysses.

  Without warning, the Silesian stopped short; Proska, walking behind him, trod on his heel.

  “You see something?” Proska asked.

  “Airplane. We must to walk faster. There, there!”

  The tall soldier stretched out one arm and pointed to a scrap of sky visible through the treetops. “You see?”

  “What of it?”

  “Pay attention, soon they drop dandelions.”

  “Dandelions?”

  Two black dots fell free of the airplane and plunged toward the earth. Parachutes suddenly sprang up over the dots and slowed their hurtling descent. Two longish jerricans dangled from the parachutes.

  “Supplies,” said Proska.

  “But not for us,” the tall man replied. He pushed his helmet back on his forehead, touched his companion’s shoulder, and said, “Come. We have only little time.”

  They went on, quickening their pace.

  “What’s in the canisters?”

  “Tinder,” the tall soldier said without turning around. “Munition. Dynamite.” He was taking big steps. With his free hand, the one not holding the rifle, he pushed aside branches that then sprang back and struck Proska’s face and upper body.

  “Do we have a lot farther to go?”

  “No, no.”

  “By the way, what’s your name?”

  “Zwiczosbirski.”

  “What?”

  “So: Zwiczos like tsvitch-oss and birski like beer-ski.”

  “Is that Polish?”

  “Upper Silesian.”

  “And what’s your first name?”

  “Jan.”

  “You have a limp. Were you wounded?”

  “Yes, that too, got wounded. Machine gun, rat-tat-tat.”

  “Where were you? Here in the marshes?”

  “Not far. By Tomashgrod. Had to storm barn. Machine gun in front of barn, hiding behind bush.”

  “In daytime?”

  “Morning. Around six. I run, jump over ditch. And when I in air, I see machine gun. See also three men and little black hole of machine gun.” The tall soldier stopped walking, looked at Proska, and went on: “I think, I hope nothing come out of little black hole until I face down on ground again. But something come out, and three bullets bite thigh.”

  “Did it hurt a lot?”

  “Nah! Now I limp, only good for guard duty.”

  “What did you say your n
ame was?”

  “Zwiczosbirski. But nobody can say this name. It breaks their tongue, they say. So all call me ‘Thighbone.’ ”

  “Because of your wounds?”

  “Come now, is time.”

  They went farther and came to a less wooded slope. The path abruptly stopped.

  The soldier from Upper Silesia looked cautiously in all directions.

  “Do you see anything?”

  “They pass often here.”

  “Who?”

  “Good friends. You must speak more soft. What’s your name?”

  “Proska. Walter Proska.”

  “Must be very quiet, Proska. They have good ears and good eyes and good aim.”

  “Why don’t you and your buddies take care of them?”

  “Watch out!” Thighbone cried in a stifled voice. “On ground, damn it, don’t move. Go on, face down. Flat, flat.”

  Proska instinctively dropped to the ground behind an alder shrub and looked up at his tall companion. “What is it?” he hissed.

  “There!”

  A group of men in civilian clothes, each armed with a submachine gun, was coming up the slope. Among them were some older men and some younger ones too, and the one leading them was a handsome youngster with green-blue eyes and a small, thin nose.

  Proska carefully pushed his assault rifle through the alder shrub and set his sights on the young leader. He brought his rifle up from below and aimed at the place where he thought the youth’s heart must be. Unsuspecting but not heedless, the men came closer. The assistant took up the initial slack on his trigger.

  I’ll give him ten more meters, he thought. Eight more meters, six, four—

  He received a blow in the ribs. Suddenly the tall soldier was lying beside him and gasping out, “No shooting, you idiot. For God sake, don’t squeeze trigger. They make kindling of us. Put gun away.” The tall soldier pressed the rifle barrel down.

  The airplane was circling above them. As the partisans moved along, they glanced up briefly. Halfway up the incline, they came to a stop, had a conversation, and then split into two groups. One group turned back the way they had come; the others marched past Proska and Thighbone toward the railroad. Proska stood up first and asked, “Why didn’t we shoot?”

  “Why?” the man from Upper Silesia repeated, grinning slyly.

  “He would’ve gone down like—”

  “No need. You already on ground.”

  “They would have run away.”

  “No. Would have shot, would have shot good. They know how. But we don’t shoot much.”

  “Why?” asked Proska, slapping his muscular neck with the flat of his hand.

  “You want shoot ‘squitoes with shotgun? They maybe hundred and fifty, we six plus corporal in charge. What is point? They shoot not much, we shoot not much. See, what is point of making elephant mad? He whack you with trunk and you through.”

  “So what are you and your outfit doing out here?”

  “Guarding railroad. I say that already. Can we walk more fast?”

  “You all sure have a funny war going on in these parts.”

  “War always funny,” the tall soldier said. “Nobody knows if life good luck or bad luck. One looks for bullet and doesn’t find, another never looks for bullet and gets hole in hide. War always surprise.”

  “I know about that, I was at the front myself. I saw a lot.”

  “Different here. Can you compare sauerkraut with Führer-bust? I say no. At front, you can’t go to sleep, and when death come, it there. You feel it when it come. Here you don’t feel it. When I wake in morning, I bend big toe. If hurts, death not come. So far, always hurts.”

  “Do we still have far to go? Where’s your unit located, actually?”

  “Have built little wood Fortress. Corporal supervised. You can say him good morning soon, if he still alive.”

  “Why? Is it so dangerous where you are?”

  The Upper Silesian didn’t reply. They were moving through tall, wet grass. The ground squelched under their feet. A dragonfly whirred past Proska’s ear. There was a smell of stagnant water. The wind stroked the reeds with its invisible hand, and they ducked obediently. The surface of a pond glinted behind birch trunks.

  “It’s beautiful here,” Proska said softly.

  “Maybe, maybe not,” murmured Zwiczosbirski. He stopped a few meters from the pond, adjusted his rifle sight to the shortest distance, signaled to his companion to stay and wait for him, and proceeded—as cautiously as possible—to the edge of the pond. But Proska followed him.

  The pond water was clear; you could see all the way to the bottom. Among the plants were swarms of beetles and water fleas. Little crucian carp snapped after the insects, and if the fish bumped against the bottom or touched it with their tail fins, then mushroom-shaped clouds of sludge swirled up to the surface, and it looked as though down below, in the teeming, oppressive silence, grenades were exploding.

  All of a sudden, the tall soldier raised his rifle and took aim, but before he could squeeze the trigger, the water in one part of the pond became disturbed, and in a flash Proska recognized the duck-bill-like snout of a giant pike. The fish threw itself halfway into the air and with a powerful snap of its tail disappeared among the water plants.

  “Satan,” groaned the Silesian, lowering his weapon.

  “Did you want to shoot him?”

  “Tickle him,” said the tall man fiercely. Beads of sweat stood on his forehead.

  “That was a pike,” Proska said ingenuously.

  “Well, what else? Butt with ears? I know him well, we old enemies. He escape me fifteen times already: break four rods, ruin one basket. But one day I get him.”

  “Old pikes are smart.”

  “I more smart.”

  “He must be twenty years old.”

  “I forty-four,” said Zwiczosbirski in a superior tone. “Frying pan wait for him, eight months now.”

  “You think you’re going to catch him?”

  “Think? No, I know. In four weeks I have him.”

  “The water’s very clear here.”

  “No wonder. Little ditch keep everything clean. Little ditch child of big river. Sometime pike in big river, sometime in ditch, and when he want digest meal, he swim here. Big fish need big house, big man need many servants. When you come to world and want know how people live, then just lie down by water and wait. You hear not much, no, no, but see. Fish—”

  Very close to them, the nervous chattering of a submachine gun broke out. A fearful cry assaulted both men’s ears: a human cry. The tall soldier raised his head, narrowed his eyes, murmured, “Stani,” and sprinted over to a little stand of mixed trees, hardwoods and conifers. Proska could barely follow him.

  “What’s going on?” Proska panted when they were both in the shelter of the trees.

  “Stanislaw scream.”

  “And so?”

  “Come,” said the tall soldier. “Quick, he need help.”

  They found Stanislaw lying facedown in a blackberry bush, his shoulders twitching, his fingers dug into the soft earth. Another soldier had already reached him and was trying to turn him over.

  “He dead, Helmut?” asked Zwiczosbirski.

  Helmut, a younger soldier with a long face and apathetic lips, said, “I don’t think so. They shaved his nose off for him, and his eyes are probably damaged too.”

  The tall soldier threw his rifle on the ground, fell on both knees, and shouted, “Stani! Zo ti tem srobjis! Ti nge bidsches sdäch! Pozekai lo! Stani! O moi bosä, moi Schwintuletzki. O moi Jesus!”

  Helmut stood up and went over to Proska. Both watched as the tall soldier caressed his fallen comrade’s body, shouting and sobbing all the while.

  “Is that Polish?” Proska asked softly.

  “Something like it. Stani�
��s his best friend. They’re both from Gleiwitz. When they get excited, that’s all they speak…Were you on the train?”

  “Yes.”

  “The only one?”

  “No, there were also—”

  “I mean, the only lucky one?”

  “Yes, it seems so…Was it Stani who screamed a little while ago?”

  “Yes, he wanted to hunt for lapwing eggs and—”

  “So early in the year?”

  “They must have surprised him while he was at it…By the way my name is Poppek, Helmut.”

  “Proska, Walter.”

  “We have to get Stani home. Keep your eyes on the treetops. The second you see something, shoot! A few of them must still be lurking around here somewhere.”

  Helmut clapped the tall soldier on the shoulder. He grasped the signal, and the two of them lifted their fallen comrade.

  “You must go careful, Helmut,” said Zwiczosbirski.

  “Yes.”

  They set off slowly. One of the wounded man’s hands hung down and was scratched by blackberry branches. He felt no pain; he’d lost consciousness.

  “Halt,” Helmut said suddenly. “Put him down.”

  They laid Stani on his back and saw, for the first time, that the upper half of his face was completely shredded. His nose was missing; of his eyes, nothing could be seen. The bullets must have been fired down on him diagonally from above.

  “My pants and my shoes are already full of blood, Thighbone. Do you have a first-aid pack? We’ve absolutely got to bandage him.”

  “Have left pack in Fortress.”

  “How about you, Proska?”

  “I don’t have any.”

  Helmut said, “Well, then, we’ll just have to go on like this.”

  The tall soldier threw himself on the ground next to Stani again and began to wail.

  “Stand up, Thighbone, no point doing that. If we don’t get him back to the Fortress fast, he’ll die.”