by Sven Hassel
‘I thought the Führer was a vegetarian,’ protests Brumme wonderingly.
‘Every streak pig has the right to believe whatever he wishes in our National Socialist society,’ instructs Porta with a lifted finger. ‘He must merely always believe in the Führer. But you would perhaps wish to forbid the Commander-in-Chief the right to a roast without sinews?’
‘No, God forbid?’ shouts Brumme frightenedly. ‘If the Führer were to order a roast I would cut it myself,’ he declares proudly and grips the cutting-knife resolutely. ‘I would cut it like so!’
The knife flashes and gleams and amazingly quickly a roast of dreams lies on the table.
Porta smiles contemptuously, takes a small magnifying glass from his pocket, presses the bloody meat testingly, and turns to Tiny with raised brows.
‘What do you think of this piece of rat-bait?’
‘Unfit for ’uman consumption,’ lies Tiny shamelessly, with his mouth running saliva at the corners. ‘Nothin’ but bloody sinews! If I didn’t know better I’d think it was the arsehole of a dried-up Jew suicide.’
‘You hear, Herr Stabsfeldwebel?’ smiles Porta. ‘Before the war Creutzfeldt was leader of a special unit on the Reeperbahn. His district stretched to the far side of Königstrasse in Altona.’
‘IV 2a, Gestapo Special Section,’ thinks Brumme who had once owned a cosy little restaurant in Heyn Höyer Strasse. Two visits from IV 2a had cost him seven months. Now he must be careful. ‘Dear God, let Germany lose this war too,’ he prays silently.
‘I will not maintain that it is a bad roast you have cut,’ continues Porta, ‘but is not a roast for the connoisseur! You are not in possession of the necessary scientific knowledge of anatomy. The Inspector General of Army Schools of Catering should give tradesmen such as army butchers, cooks, and bakers a better training. Even in our National Socialistic welfare state, there are many who need a swift and powerful kick in the slats. Welfare creates laziness and indifference. Everyone is looking for a comfortable chair in which he can plant his well-upholstered arse and wait for pension time to arrive. Herr Stabsfeldwebel, all this welfare is quite unnatural. It is best for man to have to chase after his food in the sweat of his brow. Then he is good and obedient and says thank you nicely when something is given to him.
‘But what happens now, when everybody has an abundance of everything? They all want more and even envy their wives the little something they sometimes get from a generous outsider. A society like that breeds informers, provocateurs, and is the sure way to ruin! Socialism they call it! A paradise for pampered pets, is what I call it! Pah!’
Brumme refuses to believe his own ears. This is the sharpest criticism of the National Socialist regime he has heard to date. He is completely in agreement with Porta but isn’t going to admit it. Porta sharpens the long butcher’s knife with practiced strokes and pulls a whole side of beef over to him.
‘A roast cannot be cut as you and your slaves do it. Have you never heard of sinews and muscles or the treacherous small bones?’
Brumme shakes his head and gives up trying to follow him.
‘Think of the underskin,’ shouts Porta, pleasurably. ‘It is Nature’s own secret building system used for everything which lives, whether on two legs or four, from a Sankt Pauli whore to a striped East Galician sow. You would be completely on your arse, kicking, my dear Herr Stabsfeldwebel, if you were not provided with an inner skin. This is something every butcher must know, since without this knowledge he cannot excise a roast. It is a special gimmick which holds the whole affair together. Here a fine incision is required. I imagine you can follow me, Herr Stabsfeldwebel,’ shouts Porta superciliously. ‘A long lovely incision to the vena peniscellum. That has nothing to do with the penis. Do you know what the penis is, Herr Stabsfeldwebel?’ he asks with a wide smile. Brumme, who by now resembles an overheated boiler which needs a valve opened to release surplus steam, is unable to answer.
‘The penis,’ continues Porta, ‘is that comically limp piece of gristle which depends, swinging, between the legs of men, and is called, by uncultured persons, the prick. See now, we continue the cutting so, and we have a roast which could be put on show at any art exhibition, and, slapped on to a piece of canvas, would pull in a safe first prize in the shape of a gold medal. It’s exactly the same as when they twist a rusty cycle-frame out of shape and weld a kettle where the handlebars usually are and then a part from a WC in place of the saddle. It is quite simply, Great Art! The wild dream of a DT patient which nobody understands shit about. Nevertheless any provincial Civic Council will, with pleasure, use the tax-payers’ hard-earned money to obtain the wonder for exhibition in their home town culture park. Do you remember, Herr Stabsfeldwebel, that beautiful play which was acted at the Bergtheater with Emil Jannings in the role of the Great Elector. I am thinking of the third act where this national scoundrel is sitting with half a deer between his teeth and the juices from it running down over his jabot. Now this is not merely a play, Herr Stabsfeldwebel, but something which really happened, when the Great Elector lay encamped near the wine slopes of the mountains north of Salzburg, looking hungrily towards the castle. The cook, who had prepared the venison, was a master of masters, originally a butcher from Berlin-Moabitt. He was promoted to Oberst with the right to wear a sword of honour decorated in the national colours.’
‘Heavens,’ says Brumme in confusion, ‘can that really happen to a cook?’
‘Very seldom,’ answers Porta. ‘As far as I know it has happened only twice in the history of the world. But here we have a really excellent roast,’ he cries enthusiastically, patting the large piece of meat affectionately.
‘It’s a real roast,’ praises Brumme in surprise. ‘It really belongs on the table of the Commanding General but, since he knows nothing of its existence, I feel we should eat it ourselves and make a night of it.’
‘I am not such a villain as to protest,’ smiles Porta. ‘Hunger has always been my greatest problem. Even when I have eaten my way through the pleasures of a well-laid table and convinced myself that I am satisfied, suddenly my eye will fall on a greedy pig packing himself with stuffed pigeon. Immediately my insatiable stomach begins to grown and the saliva floods between my teeth. At such a moment I am capable of committing murder to get my teeth into my neighbour’s pigeon. Usually I can get a couple of bones quickly enough for my stomach to be fooled for a few minutes! After a belch or two I start off all over again.
‘Sometimes I’ve said to myself: “Now you really can’t get another morsel down you, Herr Porta!” But the smell of a well-prepared hare from the other side of the street is enough to set me going as if I’d been seasick fourteen days in a row with the lining of my stomach turned inside out. If I can’t get it any other way then I’ll degrade myself, the Holy Virgin aid me, to stealing the odorous hare out of the hands of a hungry scoundrel of an officer. This unbearable hunger has been my lot since birth. At home we had a padlock on the larder door. My brothers and sisters and I were known as “the Locusts”. We were known all over Berlin, Herr Stabsfeldwebel. You may not believe me, but I could eat cartridge cases and wash them down with warm Polish water. For me food does not need to be of the best quality, such as German Army waste. If nothing better is available I can make do with the French or Russian Army’s muck. Ordinary home-cooking such as: sauerkraut, rice balls, butter-fried leeks, pease pudding and curried chicken can turn me into a hungry tiger. I dare not tell you what happens inside me when my eyes fall on mashed potatoes with those small cubes of pork, or a mixed fish pudding with various sauces. Herr Stabsfeldwebel, I must ask you to provide me with a double helping, when we sit down to table to celebrate this unexpected meeting. I think we understand one another!’
Brumme laughs long and noisily, without really knowing why but feeling it to be best.
‘I’ve also got some bottles of ’36 wine,’ he fawns when he feels he has laughed long enough.
‘My recruit year!’ shouts Porta in a barrack square voi
ce. ‘The wine belongs to us!’
Stabsfeldwebel Brumme snatches the gigantic roast, presses it to his bosom, and rushes to the kitchen to prepare a banquet for himself and the secret commission.
As the meal progresses, the atmosphere becomes more and more friendly. After two hours they have only got to the meat course. They eat like Vikings of old with both fists firmly gripping great chunks of meat. The gnawed bones fly in graceful curves over their shoulders.
Porta eats and drinks as if he aims to split his liver apart in record time. Four times Tiny has to lie across the table while the other two thump him on the back to loosen a couple of pounds of meat stuck in his throat. But when Brumme also begins to choke and only misses death from suffocation by a hairsbreadth, they send for the medical orderly, to stand by in case of a repetition. He is given a normal ration to amuse himself with.
‘The coolies have to eat,’ explains Brumme largely, ‘but who the hell says they have to be satisfied? We NCOs must keep the slaves down or we’re finished. This stuff about “workers of the world unite” isn’t my kind of thing. The only place they ought to be united is in a mass grave!’
‘Little Sir Echo!’ cries Porta as a resounding fart escapes from him between two great gulps of tender meat.
‘These ’ere cultivated types as spell cunt with four bleedin’ dots ain’t for me neither,’ says Tiny with his mouth full of juicy roast.
‘No, by Jesus, you’re right!’ shouts Brumme with a scowl. ‘Just like my boss, Oberintendant Blankenschild, who thinks Stabsfeldwebels are for wiping his arse on. If you could peel his skin off over his ears upwards you’d earn a place of honour at the NCO’s table in Valhalla with the right to fill your boots up with German beer!’
‘Tearing the arse off a Mongolian ape like him would be an easy matter for us,’ boasts Porta throwing a cleanly gnawed thigh-bone over into the corner where the medical orderly is sitting.
‘We’ll rip ’is bleedin’ belly up an’ tie ’is guts round ’is ears, so ’e can only shit backwards,’ Tiny whoops with laughter, and takes a long swig at a bottle. Half of it runs down over his chest.
‘My boss is a fucked-up whoreson bastard who lives on regulations and shits out orders and paperwork like a dysentry patient on his death-bed,’ snuffles Brumme raging. ‘A nigger must’ve pissed in his grandmother’s porridge.’
‘Skoal!’ shouts Porta and swings the big quart-pot over his head, before emptying it in one long slobbering draught.
They drink their own health collectively three times. They drink one another’s individually, and demonstrate a raw heartiness not by any means to be confused with what is called friendship.
‘I’ll explain the position to you, comrade,’ says Brumme confidentially, and helps a great lump of meat on its way down with a bottle of wine. ‘That pig of a suet soldier is a treacherous jackal, a stinking red-arsed baboon, a dirty, depraved south sea cannibal, who ought’ve been eaten by his tribal enemies long ago. Now he puffs himself up in an Oberintendant uniform, the dirty bastard.’ He snatches up a piece of meat and forces it into his mouth. ‘Bring the tatar!’7 he shouts through the open door to his men, who are all on the alert. Most of them have been waiters in civilian life. One of them has, in fact, been headwaiter at ‘Kaminski’.8 He is Brumme’s personal cupbearer. An insurance against the front line and a hero’s death. ‘That stinking Arab,’ Brumme continues his report on the Oberintendant, ‘is so greasy and insinuating that his black conscience oozes right through his skin. There’s no doubt whatsoever. That cunt-eater is readymade material for a court-martial.’
‘We’ll look after him,’ promises Porta readily, laying a piece of ham on top of the tatar. ‘Where in the name of hell will the Fatherland be if that kind of meat-basher is allowed to sit there quietly sabotaging the war effort?’ He puts a bottle to his lips and empties the whole contents down his throat without any visible appearance of swallowing. He swills his mouth out thoroughly with the last drops, ready for the fifth course.
‘Don’t you run into a lot of unpleasant things when you’re making these inspections?’ asks Brumme, digging Tiny with brutal friendliness between the ribs.
‘No, we know what we’re doin’. We flatten ’em before they open their yaps, but we’ve got ’eavy weapons back of us, and know all the dirty tricks that’s ever existed,’ says Tiny gently. ‘And nobody’s stupider than ’e was born!’ He gets on his feet and sings in a piercing voice:
A false friend flattered and lied,
And angry and bitter I cried.
I lost my heart and my mind;
A Stabsfeldwebel swung in the wind.
‘Are there often inspections, here?’ asks Porta interestedly. ‘I’d heard it has been a long time since the last one?’
‘Oh, it’s not so long ago,’ answers Brumme, sourly. ‘The blasted Nosey Parker’s have got their snouts in all over the place. We need a revolution! Sorry . . .’ he adds politely, as he realizes that his innermost thoughts have run away with him.
‘Quite all right,’ smiles Porta in friendly fashion. ‘Tell me, have you never been taken? I mean have you never been visited by a couple of con-men playing at being Control Commission auditors?’
There is a moment of threatening silence in the room, and then Brumme emits a long and violent roar. His face goes an unnatural shade of blue and his eyes pop halfway out of his head. Ten or a dozen blood clots must be on the way to ending his military career. Ten minutes or more are needed for him to come back to normal.
‘God’s death! If anybody had the nerve to try that on Stabsfeldwebel Brumme!’ he gasps. ‘I’d send the bastards to feed the heroes in single rations of mince meat.’ He hammers his knife into a piece of meat lying on the table and hacks away at it madly. ‘I’d cut their God-damned arseholes out! Like this! And this!’
‘I’d recommend you be on your toes, nevertheless,’ says Porta in his friendly manner. ‘You’ve no idea how many of these swindlers there are about trying to con Supplies NCOs and civil servants. We’ve run across quite a few of them!’
‘It won’t happen to me,’ Brumme assures him. ‘I can smell that kind of gaol-bait, before they even start their spiel. That kind of thing should carry the death penalty. Mother-fuckers they are! Dying’s too good for ’em!’
‘Dead men are always good men,’ intones Tiny unctuously.
After four and a half hours of unbroken eating they arrive at the dessert. A freshly-made apple charlotte. Porta takes half of it immediately, pours in half a bottle of cognac and stirs it to a thick soup which he drinks noisily.
‘Enjoy life while you’ve still got it,’ he grins. ‘Both the Nazis and the Communists are trying hard to take it away from you!’
‘If I’d known it was that dangerous, I’d never ’ave let meself get bleedin’ born,’ sighs Tiny sadly, throwing half a black pudding into his apple charlotte. He says it tastes wonderful.
The former head waiter from ‘Kaminski’ serves champagne. A bottle apiece. Less than a bottle a man is unthinkable at a German stag-party. Brumme has put on a deferentially doltish expression and addresses his guests as ‘Old Goat,’ and ‘Noble Cow.’
‘We should be friends for the rest of our lives,’ decides Tiny waving his arms wildly to emphasize his honest intentions, ‘and we will never wear brown shoes, to avoid being suspected of certain sympathies.’
They embrace and kiss one another on the cheeks in the Russian manner. They are, after all, in Russia.
‘When you get to Hamburg, I’ll introduce you to “Gerda the Gun”,’ promises Tiny. ‘The thing she’s got tucked away in ’er pants ‘d make a bleedin’ gorilla shed ’is ’air an’ ’ide ’is prick in a bleedin’ cactus.’
‘My coolies fear me more than they fear death,’ Brumme’s beery bass rings to the farthest ends of the great slaughterhouse and echoes back again. He throws a meat-bone at the Sanitätsgefreiter.
‘Hop like a kangaroo! Hop till you shit yourself!’ he orders. Proudly he points to
the medical orderly who begins to carry out the command immediately. What won’t a man do to avoid the front. ‘That’s what they call discipline!’ He bends confidentially over Tiny. ‘I know just exactly how to kill an enemy so that he’ll stay alive a long time and die badly!’
‘So do we!’ admits Tiny with a satanic laugh.
‘In my unit there is good German order and discipline,’ roars Brumme harshly and shows his clumsy dentures. Beery breath streams out like a banner from his open mouth. The medical orderly and the former headwaiter look as if they are ready to faint.
‘Order is a good and wise thing,’ smiles Porta, beginning again on the first course. ‘So that here it is not necessary to fear auditors who arrive without warning and stick their old tomatoes into your accounts and stocks. But you look to be an honest man, comrade Brumme!’
An oppressive silence sinks over the room. They watch one another like old experienced tom-cats preparing to go into battle.
‘No idiot, with even a minimum of cunning, blows the war horn straight away,’ says Porta mysteriously. ‘Intelligent people like us prefer to employ the tactics of diplomacy. Why in the world should we take the broad road of idiocy when we can use the narrow path reserved for people with grey matter under their wigs.’
Brumme whinnies delightedly and long, even though he has not understood a word.
‘I’ll give you a nice parcel to take with you when you leave,’ he promises willingly. ‘I knew right away you were real Ironheads,’ he adds grinning noisily. ‘I did wonder once if you were a pair of sly wolves, out on a little con,’ he grins with false heartiness and stares cunningly into Porta’s sly blue eyes.
‘Dear friend,’ smiles Porta resignedly. ‘Who hasn’t been doubted since January 1933? Either you’re a dangerous PU9 or an even more dangerous patriot. We live in dangerous times. Duplicity is king. Those you least expect it of are scoundrels. As I told you earlier, Brumme, don’t invite just anybody to sit at your table!’
