“Yessir.”
“You can throw your things on Stani’s bunk right now. The timing’s perfect. One goes, another comes. Look, it’s there on the far end, your new stinkpit. And just so you know: in this unit, duty is strict, and free time is fun. If you don’t sweat before you laugh, you’re not allowed to laugh. Can you laugh?”
“If I have to,” said Proska, trying to remove the blanket from Stani’s bunk.
“What are you doing?” asked Willi.
“I want my own blanket…”
“Stani’s blanket stays where it is. I’ll confiscate yours. It’s Wehrmacht property, right?”
“Yessir.”
“Sleeping under his blanket will get you used to things here faster.” Willi coughed, a hard, dry cough, and struck himself in the chest with his fist. “This damned lung fungus,” he said. “Do you have any matches?”
“Yessir.”
“Then give me some. You have cigarettes as well?”
“Yessir.”
“So much the better, I’ll take one of those too.”
Proska handed the corporal a cigarette, lit it along with one for himself, and took a few steps around the room.
“By the way,” said Willi, “you do your washing up in the ditch, and the latrine is behind the two birches. The fat guy’s our cook—we call him Melon. He’s a circus artiste, you know. Just don’t step on his Alma’s feet. That’s his hen, heh-heh-heh. As for cigarettes and schnapps, you get those from me—when there’s some to be had, naturally. Have you ever been at the front?”
“Yessir, Corporal.”
“How long?”
“Three years.”
“Well, so you have experience lying in shit. Good. I’m going out to see how Stani’s gravediggers are doing. When the one with the bad stomach’s back, you and Thighbone will go out on patrol, down to the railroad. He’ll tell you what you need to know. You haven’t met the stomach sufferer yet, but he’s a young know-it-all—you’ll see what I mean. All the rest you’ll learn in time. And then you’ll see whether you’re still alive or already dead. Sometimes out here, I’m not sure myself.”
Before the corporal went out, he asked Proska his name again, and when Proska repeated it, Willi considered for a moment and whistled through a gap in his teeth. “Are you a half-Polack too, like Switch-switch or whatever his name is? Or like his pal Paputka? Can you speak that zhchystzki too? Come to think of it, where are you from, actually?”
“I’m from Lyck.”
“And where might that be?”
“In Masuria. Seventeen kilometers from the former border.”
“In that case, you’re lucky,” said the corporal, and went out.
Proska threw his things on the bed, pulled a stool over with his foot, and sat down.
The Fortress had only one window, an unmoving eye fifty centimeters across set in the front wall. The man peered through the window and saw a thin black cloud cleaving the sky, and on its heels a white cloud—feather-light, gossamer-textured, kicked and trampled by the wind and its thousand boots into all sorts of shapes—pursuing its erratic course. He felt as though his low forehead were pressing on his eyebrow ridges; Walter Proska thought something or other, an inspiration, a notion, an idea, was trying to break out of him. Following an imperious urge to disperse some stored-up energy, he stood up and struck the table board atop the potbelly stove with one big, ruddy hand.
“Don’t destroy our furniture,” said someone behind him. Turning, he recognized the fat soldier.
“My name’s Proska. I’m supposed to stay here with your unit.”
“Heartfelt congratulations. You can read my name here, on this visiting card. And should you chance to be illiterate—oh, do you know the joke about the rookie who reports to his NCO? Nah, you can’t possibly know it. I’ll tell it to you later. When we’re finished with the grave…I’m sorry about Stani. He was a wonderful guy, and above all a hearty, grateful eater. You could cook sweat liners for him, and the sweetheart would eat them like smoked bacon. Ah, well. Incidentally, do you know where Dover is? On the English coast, right you are. It’s always being fired on, over and over again. You always hear about it: ‘Dover under fire.’ You know what that looks like? No? Well, pay attention!”
The fat soldier pulled a matchbox from his pocket, took out a match, struck it, and slowly raised it above his head. Then he made such a face that Proska had to laugh.
“A ‘Dover’ under fire, capito?1 Now I’ve really got to go. Where can the other spade be? I brought that joke back with me from my last leave. All right, see you soon.”
Melon grabbed a field spade and waddled outdoors. Proska thought, He seems pleasant enough…if only the others are like that…the tall one’s great too…wonder where he’s gone…surely he’ll be back in time for the patrol.
He heard the corporal yelling outside: “Faster, faster! This area’s not a refrigerator for old meat. If you two keep going at this rate, we’ll have to wear gas masks for the next few months. Come on, Melon, when you’re digging you have to move your hams. The earth won’t bite you! And you, Zacharias, you’re acting like you need to lie down in that hole yourself! Your wife’s expecting a baby, right? You don’t want to miss that, do you?”
Proska stood up and went over to the little window. At brief intervals, he pursed his lips and exhaled
cigarette smoke against the glass. The smoke rebounded and brought tears to his eyes. He slipped a hand into his pocket, feeling around for his handkerchief, and then he recalled that Willi had snatched it off Stani’s face and dropped it on the ground. He slowly moved away from the window and stood in the doorway. The blood-soaked cloth lay under the bench. Poppek was sitting there, holding his rifle between his knees as he smoked a cigarette.
“You see, Proska?” he said. “What did I tell you? We carried him here just so we could put him in the ground.”
“So what?”
“Suppose they had caught us on the way?”
“Wouldn’t have mattered. Stani groaned when we were carrying him over that ditch. It was our duty to bring him in. Besides, even if he’d been already dead, I still would have dragged him here.”
“Funny way of looking at it…So when are you leaving?”
“I’m staying here with you all.”
“Does Willi know that?”
“He’s the one who told me.”
“Then here’s to good neighbors.”
Proska stepped out of the Fortress and sat on the bench next to Poppek. “They sure seem to be in a hurry,” Proska said, leaning down to pick up his handkerchief.
“It’s best for him and for us. Here the mosquitoes and the flies wage war against us too. Have you heard about Goofy Gottlieb yet?”
“No.”
“He was also here, and then one day he vanished without a trace. I personally think the muggy air and the mosquitoes and the partisans drove him crazy. He most probably just ran away.”
“And nobody’s heard anything more about him?”
“Nothing,” said Poppek. “When somebody disappears from here, there’s nothing left of him. He’s barely even a memory. Have you been at the front?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Near Kiev.”
“I guess things are clearer over there, right?”
“They were clearer before. When Captain Kilian was still alive.”
“And now?”
“Now I don’t know. I was home on leave. His wife gave me wrist warmers and earmuffs to take to him—see, my captain and I lived on the same street back home. On the way back, an MP told me he’d been killed.”
“That’s the way it goes,” said Poppek. “Do you think we’re going to get out of here alive? They’ll drill holes in all of us somewhere. A little hole in the head for one, a big hole in the chest for anoth
er, and so on. We won’t make it, not one of us.”
Proska raised his head and looked curiously at Poppek’s face, at his sullen, indifferent-cynical features.
“So why are you here?”
“What do you mean?”
“If you believe there’s no chance you’ll get out of here alive, you can still just take off. That’s what I’d do in your place. Why don’t you?”
“Because it would be absurd. It would be exactly as absurd and idiotic as our being here. Everything’s absurd, everything. Except maybe foraging for firewood. That does give you a wonderful feeling. Almost like being in bed with your wife. You know what I’m talking about? Are you married?”
“No. But what exactly is your idea of foraging for firewood?”
“I’ll give you a precise explanation. Pay attention. You climb up a tree, but not an old tree—you pick a young thing instead. You climb up high, as high as you can, and then you try to tame the tree. It will sway and shake, but you wrap your legs around its trunk and tie a rope around its neck. Then you holler, ‘Ready!’ and the man on the ground below starts pulling on the rope, and he pulls you and the treetop way over to one side, he pulls and pulls, and suddenly you’re hanging in midair, a weight around a birch’s neck, or an alder’s. In those seconds, you feel like you do in bed with your wife. Above you is the sky, and under you, well, you know what’s under you. You’re wrapped around the tree, you’re holding on to it tight, the way you’d hold on to your wife, and then all of a sudden you feel it give way, you feel it get weaker and bend down farther and farther. But just at the moment when you decide you’re going to hold on to that feeling, you’re not going to let it go, you’re going to lock that feeling up inside you, at that very moment, there’s a loud crack, a jolt, you hear the boughs rustling, and maybe it even sounds to you as though the tree is groaning. Of course, you don’t know for certain. Young trees always act so mysterious, don’t you think? As though they had something to hide from us. I think nature sometimes wants to hide from all of us, from you, from Thighbone, from Willi, and from me too…What do you actually do, Proska? What kind of work?”
Proska was about to answer, but Poppek went on with his monologue. “Can you understand why I always volunteer when Melon says he needs a man for firewood duty? Tell me, were you with a woman while you were on leave? How was it? Tell me! But slowly, and in great detail.”
“They’re finished with the pit for Stani,” said Proska tonelessly, rising to his feet.
Zacharias and Melon came back, sweating profusely and carrying their short field spades.
“Get yourselves ready,” called Willi, who was still standing beside the pit.
The two soldiers walked over to the little mixed-growth forest. Stani was lying facedown in the moist black earth.
“Shall I get his tarp?” Zacharias asked.
“That’s Wehrmacht property. It could still come in handy,” said Willi.
The men fell silent. They all looked into the hole, where the shiny ends of roots sliced through by the sharp-edged spades glittered in the walls, and they could hear the voice of the wind in the leaves and the distant, breathless pee-wit, pee-wit of a lapwing. And then the fat fire-swallower took off his garrison cap, and the others also reached for their head coverings and removed them. Five men stood there bareheaded and sensed that the silence they were submitting to couldn’t last much longer.
Then Willi, standing at the head of the grave, began to speak in his hoarse voice: “Comrades. Flesh will return to flesh, and earth to earth. Stani, our Stanislaw Paputka, is made of earth. No need for me to prove that at any length. If I say it, you can believe me. Understand? Do you understand my meaning?”
Poppek and Zacharias said, “Yessir”; Melon and Proska nodded.
“Good,” said Willi. “So we must mourn the loss of a good comrade. Stani was a good friend. Damn these blasted mosquitoes! What I wanted to say was, Stani has fallen, for his Führer and for the Great German Reich. The inhabitants of Königsberg must thank him, and so must the citizens of Hamburg and Upper Silesia and all the rest. Stani will live on. Damn, one of these savage little beasts just bit me on the neck. The man who lies before us here is made of earth. Earth is so organized that it gets back everything it has given. It dropped Stani off in Upper Silesia, and now it wants him back. Is that clear? Has anyone failed to grasp that? I also wanted to say, to Melon and Proska: You two are now going to put him in there. But carefully. Try to be less clumsy than usual.”
The two took hold of the dead man and lowered him into the grave.
“But you can’t lay a man to rest facedown. Are you both crazy? Obviously, you’ve never done this before in your lives.” Willi shoved the men aside and turned Stani over. “So,” he said, “now he can see the sky again.”
Proska knelt down and placed his handkerchief over the shattered face.
“Is that Wehrmacht property?” asked Willi.
“No. It belongs to my sister, Maria.”
“Well, that’s different…Stani, farewell. We’ll meet again somewhere. Old comrades always stay in touch, understand? All right, now you can bury him.”
The fat soldier and Zacharias got their spades out of the Fortress again and started filling the dead man’s grave. When they were finished, they formed a mound over him, broke some branches off the nearest trees, and thrust the branches into the earth.
“So,” said Willi, who had supervised the work until the very end, “that’s done. The night patrol can now get some sleep. Especially you, Proska. Take a few hours’ nap, don’t miss your chance. Sleep isn’t something you can swallow like a pill. Or do you have a different opinion?”
“No sir, Corporal.”
“In that case, good night.”
Proska exchanged introductions with Zacharias and climbed up onto Stani’s bunk. He took off his belt, unbuttoned his uniform jacket, ran his tongue over some swollen mosquito bites on his hand, and stretched out. He thought, This Willi person is a pig…God willing, my unit will send for me soon…Staying in this place could cause brain rot…Wherever can the tall guy be? Hope he makes it back…there’s nobody I’d rather go on patrol with…
He turned onto one side, laid his head on an arm, and closed his eyes. Sleep came to him more quickly than he’d expected. The last thing he heard was Willi’s voice saying, “When the mail comes, remind me that we have to send off Paputka’s things. I’ll also have to write a letter. Doesn’t matter, duty’s duty. I hope his mother can read German. With people like that, you never know where you stand.”
Proska was awakened by a lot of noise. Day had already broken outside the Fortress, and Willi, Poppek, Melon, and Zacharias were sitting around the table board that lay on top of the iron stove, bellowing and laughing.
“Melon,” bawled Poppek, “we’ve waited long enough. Eat some fire for us now, or I’ll slaughter your Alma.”
“We’ll seduce her,” the corporal roared.
“Even better,” Poppek yelled. “So come over here. Here’s some gasoline.”
“I already told you: there has to be a good store of fire already in the stomach. Give me a bottle of booze.”
“A whole bottle, just for you?” asked Willi.
“You all could let me have Stani’s ration.”
“How about the new guy?” Zacharias asked.
“He’s going to be on guard duty until his kneecaps stick out of his chest,” said Willi. “Before he gets any schnapps, he has to earn it. So, to all present: Cheers. Cheers, I said!”
“Cheers,” said the others, bringing their canteen cups to their lips.
“And now,” Poppek yelled, “Fatso here is going to eat fire. Zacharias, watch out you don’t get too close to him, or your wife will have a premature baby. Actually, you’ll have to tell us how you did it. Quiet!”
“Zip it,” Willi commanded in a boozy voice. “I
give the orders for quiet around here, you got that? I want to know if that’s clear!”
“Yessir.”
“There you go, that’s better. So, now we’re going to give Melon a whole bottle. If we had more fuel, maybe we could send him into action against the partisans as a flamethrower. I’ll put in a request to that effect from the head whatchamacallit. If the boys on the other side get too cheeky, we’ll give Melon something to drink, and then he’ll spit fire in their faces…What do you think this idea’s worth? Huh, Zacharias?”
“Ten bottles.”
“Don’t talk nonsense. At least twenty, plus the War Merit Cross, with swords and citations and all the trimmings. Good. Poppek!”
“Yessir.”
“Here’s the key to the chest. Stand up, sonny, when I talk to you. Take this damn key and get two full bottles. You’ll give one of them to this fathead here. Got that? Bring some cigarettes too.”
Proska remained on his upper bunk, pretending to be asleep. The smell of liquor and clouds of tobacco smoke reached him where he lay. Now and then, he opened his eyes and looked at the men.
Poppek put two bottles filled with white liquid on the table, and the artiste immediately snatched one up, tore off the leaden cap with his fingers, and tried to pull out the cork with his teeth. When that attempt failed, he said, “Does anyone have a corkscrew?”
“Behead it!” Willi shouted.
“With a corkscrew—”
“I said, ‘Behead it,’ ” the corporal repeated furiously.
The fat soldier looked around helplessly and then struck the neck of the bottle against the stove. A third of the bottle’s liquid contents sloshed onto the floor.
“That’s show business,” Zacharias said with a grin.
Melon looked at the wet spots on the floor.
“Do you want to lick it up?” cried the corporal. “Now we’ll drink, and then we’ll have full-scale fire eating. Fire stimulates the appetite. I’d rather quench inner flames than outer ones. Hurry up! Or I’ll start sniffing red-hot horseshoes myself. If you don’t—”
The Turncoat Page 6