The boy’s eyes went slack with pleasure. He was staring at the sausage in Max’s hand. Max had already begun searching for his pocket knife to quarter the salami when he caught the intensity of the boy’s gaze. He swallowed awkwardly ‘Do you have a mother?’ The boy nodded, still transfixed by the sausage. ‘So. Give her this. With my compliments.’
‘The whole thing?’ The boy’s mouth was wide open with disbelief.
‘Of course the whole thing. What do you think? Would I give a man half a salami?’ The boy sidled a little closer, his gaze still locked onto the sausage, almost as if it might spring from Max’s grasp and skitter off down the platform of its own volition. Max laughed, and tossed the Cervelat Wurst in a gentle arc towards the boy. ‘Don’t eat it all at once. You’ll puke.’ He was fleetingly tempted to add, ‘As I’ve just done.’
The boy’s hand shot out and grasped the tumbling sausage. In the same movement he swivelled on his heels and sprinted back across the tracks towards the protection of a distant cluster of farm buildings, as if he didn’t quite trust Max not to change his mind at the very last moment and demand the sausage’s instant return. ‘I’m going to be a soldier, too!’ he shouted jubilantly over his shoulder. ‘I’m joining the 12th SS Panzer. The Hitlerjugend Division.’ Then he hesitated, halfway through a gap in the fence. ‘And I’m going to win myself lots and lots of medals, just like you.’ He threw the Cervelat Wurst exuberantly into the air and then caught it again. ‘I’ve already put my name down.’
Max picked up his grip. His throat felt as if it had been flushed through with gasoline, and then reamed out with a wire brush for good measure. ‘You’re too young. They’ll never take you. You should be in school. Learning how to stop wars, not to fight them.’
The boy’s voice transformed itself into a nasal whine. ‘I’m not too young. They told me so. I’m fifteen. Nearly sixteen. The man who recruited me said they’ll take anyone these days.’ He threw the sausage even higher into the air, then snatched it back, running it sensuously beneath his nose. ‘God, it smells good. Lecker!’ His voice was thick with saliva. ‘Maybe they’ll send me to the Russian Front? The Führer says we’re winning. That we’ll be back in Moscow by next spring. If I wait much longer, I’ll miss everything. I’m going to kill all the Russians. Then I’ll have salami every day!’ He pelted down the track, tearing craters in the snow. ‘Every day!’ Now he was brandishing the sausage as if it were a sword, or some plunder he had victoriously wrested from a vanquished enemy.
As he stood watching the boy’s antics, another uncalled-for image came to Max. From the clearing. That night at Khodorov. It was an image that had begun to haunt his waking hours – arbitrary in its appearance, immune to all his exercises of the will.
It was one of the Ivans. Blonde-haired. Narrow-shouldered. With the aqueous pale eyes and the thick sensual lips of the true Slav. Not so much older than this lad, in all probability. His hands freshly stained with Walter Brasick’s blood.
When the machine-gunning started, the boy must have dropped to the ground and lain there, pretending to be hit.
As the firing died away, Spiegel and Wanger had moved swiftly in to finish off the survivors. At the last possible moment the boy, thinking he might still escape, had sprung to his feet and sprinted for the edge of the clearing. But in his panic he had headed straight for Max.
Max had been crouching beside Meyer, attaching his field dressing, breaking the morphine ampoules. None of his men had dared to shoot at the boy for fear of hitting their commander, who was directly in the line of fire.
Only belatedly did the boy realize that he was running straight towards one of the enemy. That there was no escape. He sank to his knees, his face livid in the distressed light of the bonfire.
Max saw himself raising his pistol. Saw Schmidt jogging back towards him across the clearing. Saw Spiegel and Wanger moving relentlessly towards the boy across the fallen bodies of his comrades.
For one instant everything had seemed to slow down – a sudden, inexorable calm – and Max had felt connected to the boy, connected through the joint horror of what the boy had done and of what he, Max, was about to do. He saw the boy scrabbling at his tunic, ripping at the buttons, plucking at the fabric, as if he wished to rid himself of an unwanted layer of skin. Max, still cradling Meyer’s head in his free arm, took careful aim.
The boy was screaming now, tearing at his clothes as if they had been sprayed with naphtha. Max began the steady, familiar pressure on the trigger. All of a sudden, the boy pulled a hidden knife from inside his shredded tunic. Max hesitated, fascinated, despite himself, at the boy’s actions. For some reason he felt not the remotest sense of threat.
The boy held the knife to his own throat. His eyes pierced through Max, far through him, as though he were staring at something a long way off. Max eased his pressure on the trigger and held up his pistol, halting Spiegel and Wanger in their tracks. He could feel Meyer’s hand scrabbling weakly at his arm.
The boy’s eyes turned in on themselves as he thrust the knife into his gullet. Max let his pistol fall. The boy rocked for a moment, the blood from the wound bubbling over his hand. Then he fell backwards and kicked his legs out, arching the small of his back like a woman in hard labour.
‘Scheisse! Did you see that?’ Schmidt had reached the boy, and was staring down at him, fascinated. ‘He’s speared his own throat.’
The boy’s spasms stilled themselves, and he lay, his knees bent, one arm thrown out at an angle from his body.
‘Is he dead?’
‘As dead as Hindenburg, Captain.’
‘Then give me your Zeltbahn. You too, Spiegel. We’ll need them to carry Meyer and Wahl back to camp.’
The tone of his voice had betrayed nothing, Max felt sure of that. But the sight of the boy dashing the knife through his throat had shaken him. More than any death he had ever seen.
As he and Schmidt eased Meyer tenderly onto the waterproof poncho, Max had felt the weight of his concealed crucifix tapping at his throat like the outstretched finger of a forgotten conscience.
Bach
The church bells had fallen silent now, leaving an unexpected emptiness in the air, as if in the aftermath of an explosion – a silence filled only by the crunch of Max’s boots on the compacted snow, and the irregular hiss of his breathing. Twenty metres from the Theresien-Kirche’s main door he was surprised out of his abstractedness by the sudden swell of the church organ. Max stopped, his ears pricked, his head canted a little to one side, listening.
It was music. He found himself smiling. Music! He had almost forgotten its effect. He instantly recognized the supremely comforting opening chords of Father Bauer’s favourite Bach cantata, ‘Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust’. Max must have heard the piece a hundred times, for Father Bauer was nothing if not conservative in his musical tastes and in the morally uplifting stories he derived from them. Now he stood motionless in the snow and listened to the cantata as if for the very first time.
A contralto voice he did not recognize was singing the Aria. After a short break, the voice moved on to the Rezitativ – it was clearly sung, the organ providing little more than an obbligato accompaniment, each word striking him unswervingly, as if the cantor were speaking in a direct line to his heart.
Overcome by the music and the import of its words, Max fell back against the church door and did not enter. Hastily he rolled himself a papirosu, his hands shaking with the unaccustomed emotion. He sucked the rank tobacco deeply into his lungs, deriving a curious, almost numb comfort from the automatic process.
The brutal effect of the cigarette brought him abruptly back to earth and reminded him of his stomach. It felt grotesquely empty after that morning’s unexpected purgation. Bemused by his sudden leap from the spiritual to the temporal, Max caught himself fantasizing about a bowlful of Käthe’s goulash, with dumplings perhaps, and sour cream with chives and parsley chopped into it, and lots and lots of fresh paprika. And maybe one or two of her d
oughy, salt-encrusted pretzels to mop it up with.
The cantata ended. There was a profound silence inside the church. The moment had come.
Max ground the papirosu out with the heel of his boot. Swallowing back the saliva that had jetted into his mouth at the unexpected thought of real food, he stowed his kitbag behind a nearby tree, straightened his hat, smoothed the wrinkles out of his greatcoat, and unlatched the door.
* * *
Nobody seemed to notice him at first, for the congregation was pathetically small and massed towards the altar as if in self-protection.
Max crossed himself with Holy Water and took a few tentative steps along the aisle. The metal reinforcements in the heels of his boots immediately set up such an unholy clatter on the floor tiles that he offered only a cursory genuflection before darting for cover into a nearby pew.
A few heads turned, craning back to see who was entering so late and disrupting the service. Max hunched forwards in his pew, grimacing in embarrassment. He was only now becoming aware of how sinister the colour of his SS greatcoat might appear to a roomful of non-belligerent civilians, and of how inappropriate the silver death’s head and the dense volume of accompanying braid on his Schirmmütze might seem in a simple country church. He threw the hat onto the bench next to him, cursing his thoughtlessness.
When next he glanced up from his prayers, all heads were turned in his direction, and the service had ground to a halt. He swallowed awkwardly. Why the devil hadn’t he simply waited outside for Mass to end? His mother would never forgive him. What had he expected? A standing ovation?
He rammed his hat back on his head and stood up. Muttering apologetically, he eased himself out of the pew.
With a final hasty bow towards the altar, he rattled out of the church, only half aware that the order of service was jerkily restarting behind him.
* * *
Too ashamed to make for home, Max loitered in the churchyard, clapping his hands from time to time across his shoulders and upper arms in a vain effort to keep himself warm. How could he possibly have forgotten Father Bauer’s legendary fondness for extended ritual?
Eventually there was a squealing and a creaking, and the church doors struggled open to reveal Father Bauer’s miraculously unlined face. Max took off his hat and smiled tentatively, uncertain whether he would still be recognised.
Father Bauer squinted into the snow’s reflected light, his head nodding with an old man’s distracted emphasis. ‘Ah. I thought it was you. Yes. I knew it. Count Max. My eyes are good, you see, even if the rest of me is somewhat enfeebled.’
The priest emerged from behind the sanctuary of the ancient church doors, more bowed than Max remembered him, and considerably smaller in frame. One hand was shaking in time to his head, and Max soon realised that the convulsive movements were more than simply the outward signs of old age. He darted forward and gathered the old man in a bear hug.
‘Come, come, come. Your mother and father are here. And your sister. You had better greet them first. You can deal with me later.’
With Max steadying his arm, Father Bauer shuffled backwards to make way for his emerging congregation. Max could already distinguish the quizzical note of his father’s voice from inside the church, and his mother’s hushed response. He drew himself up expectantly.
‘Maxl!’ Bettina flew out through the church doors and into his arms, almost knocking him over. ‘Maxl!! Maxl!! Maxl!! Papa, look who it is! I knew you’d come home. I knew it.’
Once he had managed to regain his equilibrium, Max reached down and rubbed his chin deliriously against his sister’s hair, inhaling her heady female scent. ‘Oh God. Bettina.’ His eyes misted as he hugged her. Deep inside his body he could feel all the barriers of the last three years of absence breaking down. He held her away from him and thumbed the tears from her eyes, then, with the back of his hand, from his own. ‘What a beauty you’ve turned into.’
She tossed her head to one side and put on a fragile pout. ‘Wasn’t I beautiful the last time you saw me?’
‘You’re even more beautiful now.’ He pulled her to him again, oblivious to the sparse troupe of inquisitive villagers filing past them. ‘But, come. With all that beauty of yours, aren’t you married yet?’ He fumbled for her hand, joshing her to hide his unexpected vulnerability. ‘Go on. Let me see.’
‘Of course I’m not married. What do you think?’ She snatched away her left hand, then proudly paraded her right in front of his eyes. ‘But I’m engaged, though. Look. What do you think of that?’
‘My God! Who to?’ Max found that he was genuinely taken aback – one part of him had secretly been hoping that nothing, whatsoever, had changed in his absence.
‘Max?’
Max looked up. His father was standing at the door, a half smile on his face.
‘Papa.’
Max’s father moved up to embrace him. He smelt of cigars and bay rum, and Max felt a curious lethargy, a flashback almost, to his childhood, as he breathed in the familiar aroma. His father’s hair was whiter, and the lines around his eyes just a little more pronounced, but the old-school vitality was still there, and Max could summon up even by the archaic way his father insisted on dressing – the Bavarian collar, the buttons made of antler horn, the corduroy breeches with knee socks and pleated leather shoes – a picture of the forgotten, happier times to which his father had single-mindedly devoted the substance of his life.
‘Thank God you’re still alive and whole, my boy. Thank God.’ Bertram von Aschau stepped back, his face rapidly composing itself. ‘Now. Your mother is no doubt waiting for you inside the church. And you know how she hates public scenes.’ He flicked his chin ironically at the departing congregation, then shrugged apologetically. ‘You’d best go in and see her. For she certainly won’t come out to you.’
Max slapped his hat compulsively against his thigh. ‘Shouldn’t I change out of my uniform first? If the past is anything to go by, I’ll probably find her holding up the Holy Cross and a handful of crushed garlic to protect herself from its baleful influence.’ He raised his eyebrows questioningly. ‘Would it be foolish to hope that anything has altered since the last time?’
Von Aschau cleared his throat self-consciously, then lowered his voice. ‘I’m very much afraid it would.’ He exhaled loudly through both nostrils. ‘This is all my fault. I know it. I have explained the situation to her a thousand times. Ten thousand, even. But still it does no good.’
Max drew himself up and gave a mock salute. ‘So. Into the valley of the shadow of death rode the… how many hundred was it? You are the poetry expert, Papa.’
‘It was six, Max. Six hundred.’ His father shrugged resignedly. ‘But there was never any question of a shadow.’
* * *
Hildegarde von Aschau was waiting for her son by the altar. She had pulled her veil down over her face so that her features, in the dim light of the nave, were indistinct. At fifty-four years old – four years younger than her voluntarily antiquated husband – and with her crisp blonde hair and renowned von Stamnitz complexion miraculously intact, she could still pass for twenty years her husband’s junior. An older sister to Max, perhaps, but hardly a mother.
Cursing, yet again, the insistent tap of his boot heels on the floor tiles, Max folded his Schirmmütze under his arm and gave her a formal bow. His mother held out her hand and Max kissed it. The interior of his mouth had gone dry and he had difficulty swallowing. He could feel her eyes from beneath the carapace of her veil, taking in his uniform.
‘The colour of death.’
‘I’m sorry?’ Max straightened up from his bow.
‘Your uniform. It is the colour of death.’
Max inhaled deeply. ‘I’m hardly responsible for the colour of my uniform. If I had been allowed to enrol in the Wehrmacht like Hans-Albin, and not the Waffen SS, as father insisted I should do to safeguard our family property from the Nazis, it would be grey. The colour of old age. Would you have preferred that?’
> Max’s mother raised one arm to indicate that Max should slip his hand beneath it to accompany her out of the church. ‘You will confess your sins before Father Bauer while you are here? You will ask God’s forgiveness for what those monsters have made you do, and then attend Mass?’
Max surreptitiously raised his eyes to heaven. ‘Those monsters, as you call them, haven’t made me do anything I didn’t want to do. That much I swear to you. My conscience is as clear as any man’s can be who has been fighting in a stinking filthy war not of his own making for nearly five years.’
Hildegarde von Aschau gave a long-suffering sigh. ‘How long are they giving you to us?’
Max pretended that he hadn’t noticed the loading of her question. ‘They have allowed me three weeks. One week for every year I’ve been on the Russian front. It has taken me a week to get here. It will take me another week to travel back.’
‘So you will miss Christmas?’
Max shook his head in silent incomprehension. ‘Christmas? Christmas? I think I have forgotten what the word signifies.’
Bettina
‘Do you have to wear your uniform all the time?’
Max and Bettina were seated in the pavilion, in a double swing chair brought in for storage from the previous summer. Max had set up a portable paraffin heater to take the edge off the icy atmosphere, and now he threw a fur rug over Bettina’s legs and climbed underneath himself, just as they had done as children on countless occasions before.
‘It’s regulations.’
‘But here in the Schloss. Who is there to see you, except us?’
Max laughed dryly. ‘You have a point there. Or perhaps Käthe would denounce me to the authorities?’
The Occupation Secret Page 3
