Boettcher was waiting on the steps of the town hall. Above him, dim in the moonlight, shimmered the grotesque mask of a gargoyle. "Have you had any luck?" he asked from a distance.
"No. And you?"
"Not I either. They're not in any of the hospitals, that's pretty sure. I've tried almost all of them. Man, the things you see there! Whatever anyone says, it's different with women and children than with soldiers! Come along, let's get a beer somewhere."
They walked across the Hitlerplatz. Their boots echoed. "One more day gone," Boettcher said. "What can one do? Soon my whole furlough will be over."
He opened the door of a pub. They sat down at a table inside the window. The curtains were tightly drawn. The nickel taps of the bar gleamed in the half-dark. Boettcher seemed to be at home in the place. The proprietress, without asking, brought two glasses of beer. He glanced after her. She was fat and her hips swayed. She was not wearing a corset.
"Here I am, sitting alone," he said. "And somewhere my wife is sitting. Alone too. Anyway I hope so! Isn't that enough to drive you nuts?"
"I don't know. I'd be happy enough if I only knew for sure that my parents were sitting somewhere. No matter where."
"Well, parents are different. You don't really need them. If they're all right that's fine, and that's all there is to it. But a wife—"
They ordered two more glasses of beer and unpacked their dinner. The proprietress strolled around the table. She looked at the sausage and the fat. "Children, you live high!" she said. -
"Yes, we live high," Boettcher replied. "We have a complete homecoming package with meat and sugar and don't know what to do with it."
He took a swallow. "It's easy for you," he said bitterly to Graeber. "You can feed up now and later go out and pick up a whore and forget your misery!'
"You could do that too. "
Boettcher shook his head. Graeber glanced at him in surprise. He hadn't expected that much fidelity in an old soldier. "They're too skinny, comrade," Boettcher explained. "The damnable thing is I only warm up to very buxom women.
Others give me the willies. It simply doesn't work. I might just as well go to bed with a hat rack. Only very buxom women! Otherwise it's no go on my part."
"Well, there's one!" Graeber pointed to the proprietress.
"You're mistaken!" Boettcher became excited. "There's an enormous difference, comrade What you see there is flabby, soft fat you sink into. A buxom person, I grant—but a feather bed, not a double inner-spring mattress like my wife. With her everything is of iron. The room used to shake like a smithy when she went off, and the pictures fell off the walls. No, comrade, you can't just go out and find something like that on the street."
He brooded, staring straight ahead. Graeber suddenly smelled violets. He looked around. They were growing in a pot on the windowsill. They smelled infinitely sweet and in one breath they recalled everything: childhood and security and home and expectancy and the forgotten dreams of youth —it was very strong and it came as quickly as a surprise assault and it was over again at once; but it left him confused and exhausted, as though he had been running through deep snow with a full pack.
He stood up. "Where are you going?" Boettcher asked.
"I don't know. Some place or other."
"Have you been to Headquarters?"
"Yes. They gave me a transfer to the barracks."
"Good. Be sure to get into Room Forty-eight."
"Yes."
Boettcher's eyes lazily followed the proprietress. "I'll sit around here for a while. Drink another beer."
Graeber walked slowly along the street that led up to the barracks. The night had grown cold. At a crossing, streetcar rails rose glittering over a bomb crater. In the open doorways the moonlight lay like metal. He heard his steps resounding as though someone were walking with him under the pavement. Everything was empty and clear and cold.
The barracks were on an elevation at the edge of the city. They were undamaged. The parade ground lay in the white light as though covered with snow. Graeber walked through the gate. He felt as if his furlough were already over. His former life had collapsed behind him like his parents', house and he was going to the front again—to a different front this time, without artillery or rifles but with no less danger.
CHAPTER X
IT WAS three days later. At the table in Room Forty-eight, four men were playing skat. They had been playing for two days, stopping only for food and sleep. Three of the players kept changing off; the fourth played uninterruptedly. His name was Rummel and he had arrived on furlough three days before—just in time to bury his wife and daughter. ;He had identified his wife by a birthmark on her hip; she no longer-had a head. After the funeral he had come to the barracks and begun to play skat. He spoke to no one. He sat there impassively and played. He was winning.
Graeber was sitting by the window. Next to him Lance Corporal Reuter reclined, with a bottle of beer in his hand and his bandaged right foot on the window seat. He was senior there and suffered from gout. Room Forty-eight was not only a haven for luckless men on leave; it was also the non-contagious sick ward. Behind them Engineer Feldman lay in bed. It was his ambition to make up in three weeks' time the missed sleep of three years of war. He got out of bed only at meal times.
"Where's Boettcher?" Graeber asked. "Not back yet?"
"He's gone to Haste and Iburg. Somebody, loaned him a bicycle at noon. Now he can investigate two villages a day. But he still has a dozen ahead of him. And then there are the camps where the evacuees are sent from all over. They're hundreds of kilometers away. How's he going to get to them?"
"I've written to four camps," Graeber said. "For both of us."
"Do you think you're going to get an answer?"
"No. But that doesn't make any difference. You write just the same."
"To whom did you write?"
"To the camp authorities and then, in addition, in each camp directly to Boettcher's wife and to my parents."
Graeber brought a packet of letters out of his pocket and showed them. "I was just going to take these to the post office."
Reuter nodded. "Where were you today?"
"At the public school and the Cathedral school gym. Then I went to an assembly point and tried the registry office again. Nothing."
A card player who had been replaced joined them. "I can't understand why you men on leave sit around here in the barracks," he said to Graeber. "As far away from the Prussians as possible, that would be myvmotto! I'd rent a room, put on civilian clothes, and be a human being for two weeks."
"Do you get to be a human being just by putting on civilian clothes?" Reuter asked.
"Sure. What more is there to it?"
"You see?" Reuter said to Graeber. "Life is simple when you take it simply. Have you got your civilian things here?"
"No. They're buried under the ruins in Hakenstrasse."
"I can lend you some."
Graeber glanced through the window at the drill field. A few squads were practicing loading and inspection, grenade throwing and saluting. "I don't know," he said. "Out there I thought I'd throw this damn outfit into a corner as soon as I got home and put on decent clothes—and now I don't care one way or the other."
"You're just a perfectly commonplace barracks crapper," the card player declared, consuming a slice of liverwurst. "A doughfoot who doesn't know what he wants. It's a crime the way the wrong people always get furloughs!"
He went back to rejoin the game. He had lost four marks to Rummel and that morning had been declared 1A by the infirmary doctor; that made him bitter.
Graeber got up. "Where are you going?" Reuter asked.
"Into the city. To the post office and then on."
Reuter put down his empty beer bottle. "Don't forget that you're on furlough. And don't forget that it will soon be over."
"That's something I'm not likely to forget," Graeber replied bitterly.
Reuter cautiously lifted his bandaged foot from the window seat and
set it down in front of him. "That's not what I mean. Do all you can to find your parents; but just the same don't forget that you're on furlough. It will be a long time before you get another."
"I know that. And before then there'll be lots of chances of getting my ass pinched shut for good. I know that, too."
"Good," Reuter said. "If you know that, everything's in order."
Graeber walked toward the door. At the table where the card players sat Rummel had just drawn a grand with four jacks; plus the whole slate of clubs. It was a hand with drums and trumpets. Impassively he slaughtered his opponents. No quarter was given. "Cleaned out!" the man who had called Graeber a barracks crapper said in despair. "What do you say to a hand like that! And he doesn't even enjoy it!" "Ernst!"
Graeber turned around. A short, thick-set S.A. commander was standing in front of him. He had to think for a minute; then he recognized the round face with its red cheeks and hazelnut e es. "Binding," he said. "Alfons Binding!"
"Himself in person."
Binding beamed at him. "Ernst! Man alive! We haven't seen each other in a thousand years! Where have you come from?"
"Russia."
"On leave then! That's something we have to celebrate. Come along to mv place. It's not far from here. I have a first-rate cognac! What a surprise! Meeting an old schoolmate who has just come from the front! There's got to be a toast to that."
Graeber looked at him. Binding had been in his class for a couple of years but Graeber had almost forgotten him. It was only by accident that he had heard that Alfons had joined the S.A. Now he stood in front of him in elegant, gleaming boots, happy and unconcerned. "Come on, Ernst. Don't be childish," he urged. "A good schnapps can't hurt us."
Graeber shook his head. "I haven't time."
"But, Ernst! Just one drink between friends! There's always time for that. Between old comrades!"
Old comrades! Graeber examined the uniform with the commander's insignia. Binding had worked his way up in the world. But he might be just the one who could help him find his parents, he thought suddenly. Just because he belonged to the Party! Perhaps he knew ways only open to Party members. "All right, Alfons," he said. "For one schnapps." "That's right, Ernst. Come along, it's not far."
It was farther than Binding had maintained. He lived in the suburbs in a little white villa that lay. peaceful and undamaged, in a garden with tall birch trees. Bird houses hung in the trees and from somewhere came the splashing of water.
Binding preceded Graeber into the house. In the hall hung the ant'ers of a stag, the head of a wild boar and a stuffed bear's head. Graeber looked at them in amazement. "When did you get to be such a hunter, Alfons?"
Binding grinned. "There's nothing in it. I've never touched a gun. Just decoration. Looks fine, though, doesn't it? Germanic!"
He led Graeber into a room strewn with rugs. On the walls hung paintings in magnificent frames. Huge leather chairs stood about. "What do you think of my den?" he asked proudly. "'Cosy, isn't it?"
Graeber nodded. The Party looked after it own. Alfons had been the son of a poor milkman. It had been difficult for his father to send him to the Gymnasium.
"Sit down, Ernst. How do you like my Rubens?"
"What?"
"But, Ernst! The big ham there over the piano!"
It was the painting of a very voluptuous naked woman standing at the edge of a pond. She had golden hair and a tremendous behind highlighted by the sun. That would be something for Boettcher, Graeber thought. "Pretty," he said.
"Pretty?" Binding was greatly disappointed. "Why, man alive, it is simply magnificent. It came from the same art dealer the Reichsmarshal patronizes. A masterpiece! I snapped it up cheap from the man who bought it. Don't you really like it?"
"Of course! It's just that I'm no connoisseur. But I know someone who would go crazy if he saw it."
"Really? A big collector?"
"Not that; but a specialist in Rubens."
Binding beamed. "That delights me, Ernst. It really delights me. I myself would never have thought that I'd be an art collector one day. But now tell me how you are and what you're up to. And whether I can do anything for you. One has certain connections, you know." He laughed slyly.
Against his will Graeber was somewhat touched. This was the first time that anyone had unguardedly offered to help him. "You can do something for me," he said. "My parents are missing. Perhaps they've been evacuated or are somewhere in one of the villages. How can I find out? They don't seem to be here in the city any longer."
Binding sat down in an easy chair beside a hammered copper smoking stand. His gleaming boots stood like stove pipes in front of him. "It's not so easy if they're no longer in the city," he remarked. "I'll see what I can find out. It will take a couple of days. Perhaps even longer. It depends on where they are. Just now everything is in pretty much of a mess—you know that."
"Yes, I've noticed that."
Binding got up and went to a cabinet. He got out a bottle and two glasses. "Let's have a drink first, Ernst. Genuine armagnac. I like it almost better than cognac. Prost."
"Prost, Alfons."
Binding refilled the glasses. "Where are you living now? With relatives?"
"We have no relatives in the city. I'm living in the barracks."
Binding put down his glass. "But, Ernst, that's absurd. A furlough in the barracks! That's as good as none at all. You can stay with me! Plenty of room. Bedroom and bath, and you can bring a girl, anything you want." "Do you live here alone?"
"But of course! Did you think I was married? I'm not as dumb as that. In my position women practically break the doors down to get in!" Alfons winked and pointed to a tremendous leather sofa. "The things that sofa has seen! They come here and plead with me on their knees."
"Really? Why?"
"On their knees, Ernst. There was one here just yesterday!
A lady from the highest circles, as a matter of fact, with red hair, superb bosom, a veil, a fur cape, here on this rug. She wept like a fountain and was ready for anything. Wanted me to get her husband out of the concentration camp."
Graeber glanced up. "Can you do a thing like that?" Binding laughed. "I can get people in. But getting them out isn't so simple. Of course I didn't tell her that. Well, how about it, Ernst? Will you move in?"
"I can't just yet, Alfons. Everywhere I've been I've given the barracks as my address for messages. I must wait and see what comes."
"All right. But remember you always have a home with Alfons. The food is first-class too, I made good advance preparations."
"Thanks, Alfons."
"Nonsense! After all, we're schoolmates. We should help each other.You let me copy your homework often enough. That reminds me, do you remember Burmeister?"
"Our math teacher?"
"He's the one. That ass was responsible for my being fired in upper-middle year. Because of that business with Lucie Edler. Don't you remember?"
"Of course," Graeber said. He did not remember.
"I begged him not to report me. Didn't get anywhere. The fiend was implacable. His moral duty, and a lot more guff. My father almost beat me to death for it. Burmeister!" Alfons savored the name on his tongue. "I've paid him back. Ernst! Got him six months in a concentration camp. You should have seen him when he got out. He stood at attention and almost wet his pants when he saw me. He educated me; so I re-educated him thoroughly. Good joke, eh?"
"Yes."
Alfons laughed. "That sort of thing does one's soul good. That's what's' so nice about our movement. Every once în a while you get a chance like that." He noticed that Graeber had stood up. "Are you going so soon?"
"I've got to. I am restless, you understand that."
Binding nodded. His face became solemn. "I understand, Ernst. And I'm dreadfully sorry. You know that, don't you?"
"Yes, Alfons." Graeber knew what was coming next and tried to cut it short "I'll stop in here then in a couple of days."
"Come tomorrow afternoon. Or toward eve
ning. Around five-thirty."
"Fine. Tomorrow, around five-thirty. Do you think you'll know something by then?"
"Perhaps. We'll see. In any case we can drink a schnapps. By the way, Ernst—have you been to the hospitals yet?"
"Yes."
Binding nodded. "And—just as a precaution of course—to the cemeteries?"
"No."
"Well, go there. Just in case. There are still a lot there who haven't been reported."
"I'll go tomorrow."
"Good, Ernst." Binding was visibly relieved. "And stop in tomorrow for longer. We old schoolmates must stick together. You haven't any idea how lonesome it is in a position like mine. Everyone wants something from you."
A Time to Love and a Time to Die Page 12