A Soldier's Tale

by M. K. Joseph

  We should like a little help from you, mamzelle, explained the older man in good French. This young man, you know him, I think? (He glanced at Winterhalter, who nodded, smiling.) Of course. Now he has been a little foolish. He has fallen into bad company. We should like to talk to him, to warn him. But (he chuckled kindly) we do not know where to find him. Young people are so restless, the Wanderjahre, we all know, don’t we? So if you could just tell us where we could find him—an address, a favourite café, perhaps?

  She emptied her brandy glass but it did not help. She went on staring at the photograph, her mind full of blank misery. Balthazar was saying something, something funny, the other two young faces were turned to him, smiling.

  Be gentle, doctor, said the Colonel softly, our young friend has had a shock. She was shown—by mistake, of course—into the interrogation-room.

  What a pity, said the older man, what a pity.

  The Colonel laid his hands lightly on her shoulders and the touch shot like an electric shock through her body. She heard her voice come out dry and cracked like a prisoner under torture: I do not know—I know only one thing. A hotel where we—where he used to stay.

  And then she told them the address.

  The Colonel helped her to a big soft armchair over in the dark corner of the room away from the lamplight. Far away she could hear the older man speaking in rapid German on the telephone. The room grew very dim and she must have dozed.

  When she woke up, the window curtains were open; Winterhalter and the Gestapo man were looking down into the courtyard outside. They talked in low voices; Winterhalter laughed. She caught the word ‘Alésia’. She stood up uncertainly and came behind them, dazed and curious. Two army trucks were backed into the courtyard and there was a heavy guard. A spotlight was switched on. The backs of the trucks were thrown open; the prisoners inside were pushed out, sprawling on the cobbles, picked up, dragged inside. Some of them seemed to be unconscious. One of them was Balthazar; one was Wolf-face’s godson; one was the Brat’s cousin; one was the boy from the village.

  Saul didn’t necessarily believe all of this story—as he said later, he only had her word for it. That may look like brutal detachment on his part, but in those more innocent days such things were much harder to credit. Today over thirty countries are said to practise torture—imagine, thirty Gestapos.

  Now, of course, I’m refining my pictures again, or (if you prefer it) decoding these messages from the past, a double decode in this case, trying to see through her eyes what I knew only at second-hand through his. She told him in fragments, in broken sentences and isolated pictures, from which certain images came through to him very vividly, like the horrid little cell and the lamp-lit room upstairs. She never even finished the story, but let it die away as she curled up close against him and finally slept. Outside in the dark the early cocks were crowing.

  The big ginger cat is sitting beside me on the desk. When he was young he had terrible fights and came limping home with holes chewed in his flanks, so we had him neutered. He eats well and walks portly in his beautiful tawny coat. As I write this late at night the house is quiet except for an occasional passing car, with the radio playing Cabaret. He leaps smoothly on to the desk and looks slightly abashed as he lands on a sheet of manuscript and skids across the desk to a halt. Now he sits beside me, listening to the radio and dozing. He is getting old, his tongue sticks out and he dribbles sometimes when he sleeps, and late at night he sits close beside me for company. The old dog is asleep not far away, under the model-cabinet. They used to fight each other, but now they have an armed truce, and even sometimes sleep on the same couch. At night the dog sleeps outside the bedroom door. Old creatures want company. Even animals fear whatever is out there in the dark.

  By the time Saul Scourby got to this point in the story, I was interested enough to want to hear the rest of it. Even though I didn’t relish the thought of the journey home in the dark, I hoped that my captain would take his time in the Officers’ Mess. Sure enough, when I went outside for a leak and to see what was happening there was a roar of chat from behind the blacked-out windows, the jangle of a piano and a bit of singing. The night was pretty quiet, with a low chilly ground-mist and a cold glow of artificial moonlight somewhere along the river, and the searchlights doing a slow pavane eastward over Germany.

  Back in the dust-smelling gloom of the barn Saul had made another brew of tea and got one of the cooks to whip up some corned-beef sandwiches. We settled down again and he went on with the story.

  Well, you wouldn’t Adam-and-Eve it, because I always sleep pretty light, ready for trouble like, but next morning I slept in. I was dreaming about my granny and church on Sunday and church bells, and when I woke up the church down the road was clanking that dreary bell they had. Her side of the bed was empty, and it shook me a bit, because I thought she might have risked it and scarpered. First thing I reached out for my short knife and the sten, always laid ready to hand at night on the rush-bottomed chair by the bed, but they was both where I left them.

  I could smell bacon frying and there was a clank as the oven door opened. So I pulled on my shirt and went into the kitchen, and there she was in her purple Japanesy wrap-thing with her red hair all loose, looking sleepy and warm. So I slips my hands round her and gives her a good hug, where she stood by the stove.

  Outside, it was one of them summer mists like they had in Normandy—remember? (And I remembered the golden mist full of dissolved sunlight, the hedges powdered with dew and the fertile smell of summer, and I laid the memory of it alongside the cold creeping greyness outside the barn.) It looked sort of dodgy, you couldn’t see more than about twenty yards, and it crossed my mind that someone might have clever ideas with a grenade or something. So I kept my eyes open all the way to the bog, and back again.

  Then I went round into the wash-house, where the flagstones were still splashed and damp where she’d washed herself earlier. I stripped and soused a bucket of that cold water over myself, and it didn’t half wake me up.

  Well, she made me another good breakfast—your English breakfast, she called it—and she ate a bit with me. I suppose it was a change for her from that coffee and rolls they always have. It’s poor food that. She enjoyed her bacon and sausage, and we chatted for a while.

  I says to her, Why didn’t you explain to someone, about the Gestapo and all that?

  I tried to, she says, but who would believe? I had slept with Germans, that was enough.

  I didn’t say no more, after all I only had her word for the whole thing, didn’t I?

  Then I went outside to have a smoke while she cleaned up. And for a while it was like old home week, the number of people there was passing along that stretch of road.

  The mist was thinning. I could see old Wolf-face doing his turn at keeping look-out by the old beech tree. A kid came running up the road from the direction of the church, a little boy of maybe eight dressed in one of them blue smocks like they have, faded, scrubbed, and a black beret. He stops and has a good look at me.

  Hullo, I says, friendly-like. You know what these kids are, they like the uniform and they trust soldiers, knowing we’re a soft lot really, always thinking we’d like to have our own kids about us.

  You English soldat? he says.

  That’s right, I says.

  You give me cigarette? he says, cheeky.

  I’ll give you a thick ear, I says. How about some chocolate? (Because I had a bit in my pocket just in case.)

  Oh, chocolate, he says as if it was gold-dust.

  I give it to him, and he was nibbling at it when a woman came up the road. There was others behind her. They was coming back from church and the kid must’ve run ahead.

  The woman had on a black dress and a shawl over her head. She was thin and dark and you could see her in the boy, the resemblance. She’s a bit anxious and clucks over the boy like a hen, but when she sees how he’s enjoying the chocolate she smiles a bit, shy-like. Then she looks over my shoulder and her
face changes.

  I swung around because it might be trouble, but it was only Belle, in her blue-and-white dress, with her hair braided up, looking like a Sunday-school teacher. The woman, the mother, screamed out something and she caught the kid an open-handed slap that staggered him and sent the bit of chocolate flying into the dust. The poor kid began to holler and she grabbed his arm and dragged him up the road, giving him a proper piece of her mind.

  I was going to go after her and make her let the kid alone when I heard voices behind and there was half-a-dozen more of them, oldish men and women mostly, all in Sunday black. One of them leaned over the gate and said something to Belle, but she stood her ground. I stood in the gateway and stared them down till they went off up the road, but still turning back to look at us. They stopped and had a proper palaver with Wolf-face and the others up the hill, but I took Belle by the arm and we went back inside.

  Well, like I said, it was a bit of old home week, because the next thing that happened was that the Indestructible Yank dropped in again. Come to think of it, it could have been quite a bit later, because I went back to the front garden and stopped out there for a while, smoking and watching the last of the mist clear and the sun come through, and generally keeping an eye on things. The Mass-bell had stopped a while back, and instead I heard the Angelus what they rung at midday, dong-dong-dong and stop, dong-dong-dong and stop, like that. I see the Indestructible Yank strolling down the road, and there he was again, large as life, with that beefy close-shaven face and a uniform like it was just fresh from the laundry and a smell of perfume. He has a small pack slung over one shoulder, and he carries a tommy-gun, very heavy and shiny. He looks tough but sort of unreal, like a soldier doll.

  Hi, he says.

  Hullo, I says.

  Say, fella, he says, I’m real sorry about yesterday. Didn’t know you had interests here.

  Well, I have, I says, short-like.

  Aw, come on, he says, we’ve had that bit. I’m your friend, honest, I’m a real friendly guy.

  He was looking past me, watching for Belle, but she didn’t show though I reckoned she was sure to be watching, and he knew it too. I didn’t make any move to stand out of the gateway. He slipped the small pack off his shoulder and put it down by the gatepost.

  Look, he says, I brought you some stuff. C’mon, take it, we got plenty. It’s real good, tinned turkey and stuff. You got enough to eat? This’ll vary your diet. C’mon, share it with the strawberry blonde, with my compliments.

  So I thought, why not? We could do with a change from all that bullybeef, and after all where’s the harm? Of course he wants Belle to remember him as a good provider, generous. But he’s wrong. That’s what the Yanks never understand, they give people things and expect them to be grateful, and the people aren’t grateful because they think the Yanks have got all this stuff and they just can’t help giving some of it away, anyhow.

  Me, I took it and thanked him nicely, because food’s food at any time. He ambled off up the road again with that gun slung over his shoulder.

  I took the pack inside and emptied it out on to the kitchen table. Belle watched—sure enough, she’d been watching from behind the curtains. It was good stuff like he said, a big tin of turkey and another one of fruit salad, and coffee and even a tinned cake, all just like Christmas. American fags too, Camels. She was still angry, but I think the fags helped, because she’d told me she liked them better than English ones.

  Look, I says, we can use this stuff, and the Yanks aren’t all that bad. It’s just that they aren’t really good at being soldiers. They’re only playing at it, so they have to have lots of stuff to keep them happy. Not like us, we’re used to not having much.

  (I think Saul was right about this. Each country has a character of its own that comes out in its army. The Germans fought like engineers, the Russians like peasants, the Americans like movie cowboys, the British like workmen, grumbling, doing their job and taking their pay. An army of mercenaries indeed—they’re the ones to be careful of, the tradesmen.)

  Then she told me some of the things that the Jerries had said about the Yanks in their propaganda. She said that it was the Yanks they really picked on, how corrupt they were and decadent and all that. They didn’t seem to mind the British so much, though they seemed frightened of the Jocks.

  It didn’t surprise me none, and I told her the old one about the Jerry on the radio—you know—Ven der Britisch Schpitfeuer come ofer, ve duck—ven der Cherman Messerschmitt come ofer, you duck—ven der Americanisch Lightning come ofer, ve both duck.

  That made her laugh, and it didn’t help the Yank any. You see, he still hadn’t understood. He meant the turkey and stuff as a present, but to her it was like showing that he’d still got his claim in. Like a down payment on a haitch-pee, with her as the property. She was still against him—that was all right, but I didn’t want her sulky with me. I looked out of the window and the mist was quite gone and it was a real sunny day.

  Cheer up, girl, I says, how about a picnic?

  She looks up and says, We cannot go far.

  No need to, I says, there’s a good spot right out there at the back in your orchard.

  We spread out the tins on the table and began to open them. The turkey looked all right, all white meat and jelly, very savoury. He’d even put in a little tin of cranberry sauce, the way the Yanks like it. There was mixed vegetables, biscuits and butter, cheese, some real coffee. We got it all ready and I picked out the spot in the orchard.

  The grass had grown long all over, except in one part, a kind of square patch overhung by four very old trees. There was a lot of moss there, perhaps on purpose to keep an open space, perhaps just because it was an old part of the orchard. I laid a blanket there and a white cloth she brought out. When we put out the food it made a real good spread. I had my sten and the other tools laid handy, but I didn’t really expect trouble, we was so well hidden on all sides, so still and quiet.

  I looked it over and I says, joking like, Pity we ain’t got no champagne.

  Wait, she says, and she runs off through the orchard towards the wash-house. Soon she comes back with two bottles and there was dried earth on them and the little metal plates were all rusty so that they broke up.

  Quite a lot of it was buried, she says, and the Boches have not found it all.

  She showed me how to ease out the cork and when I poured it out it had a pretty good head on it, in the tumblers. It was the stuff all right, and it went down nicely with that turkey. We sat there on the grass talking and eating. It was really warm there and still under the trees. I was in shirt-sleeve order but presently I took my shirt off so as to get the sun, while she loosened her blouse and unbound that beautiful red hair so that it rippled down over her shoulders. We finished the turkey and the bottle about the same time, and I lay back and stared up at the sky through the branches hung thick with little half-ripe apples. She moved over so she was sitting close beside me, looking down at me. I felt warm and peaceful and sort of innocent.

  She’d been talking about Paris and the painters and art and all that—I couldn’t follow all of it. She looks at me and says, There is a marvellous painting by Manet, I feel like it now, it is called The Lunch on the Grass. There are two men and two girls, you know, having a picnic very like this. Only the men are dressed in the costume of gentlemen, trousers, waistcoats, everything. One of the girls is quite nude. They are like classic nymphs in Arcadie, you know? You do not know, do you, you stupid big Englishman?

  But when she said it she bent down and kissed me, very sweetly.

  I’m not much on art, I says, but it sounds all right.

  All right, she says, all right, is that all you can say? It is superb, a vision. I should like to be like that, an Arcadian.

  What, sitting on the grass with no clothes on?

  Yes, she says.

  Dare you, I says, joking.

  Here, she says, open the other bottle, the way I showed you.

  Now, it took
a bit of doing, breaking off the rusty wire and easing out the old cork and pouring it all nice and creamy into the tumblers. While I did it she stood up and moved away behind me and came back. Then I looked up and it really took my breath away. She’d slipped all her clothes off—I don’t think she had much on anyway—and she was standing there with the sunlight dappling down on her, with her red hair all loose and golden about her face, and her beautiful big charlies and the tawny hair at her crotch and her long white legs. For a second she just stood there, then she eased down beside me, sitting with her legs tucked under her. She took up her glass and drank it off in little quick sips, to steady herself like.

  You really are a smasher, I says. You really are. I never seen nothing like you. I’ll remember this all my days.

  She looks at me, pleased, and sort of giggles.

  Now you, she says.

  I thought you said the gentlemen had waistcoats and trousers and all? I says.

  Oh, that is in the picture, she says, we can do better. And she kissed me very lightly and reached over and began to tug at my belt.

  Here, hold on, I says, but I just couldn’t help it, with her half-helping and half-hindering, I got out of my trousers and soon I was sitting there mother-naked beside her.

  Now it really is like the garden of Eden, I says, and we drank on it and refilled our glasses, but I wasn’t sure.

  Because she looked down at me and saw how I was and she says, Is there something wrong? What is wrong, Saul? Is it my fault?

  No, I says, it’s hard to say, Belle, but—it’s like I’m a night man, see? I never taken a woman in daylight, see? not to look upon her nakedness. And I never had a red-haired woman before you, I says, and like this it makes me feel strange and it puts me down.

  Lie down, she says, putting her hand on my shoulder.