The Years of the Wolf

by Cormick, Craig;

  But Arno has seen them often enough in the early mornings, busy at their labours, and with sleeves rolled up high while the other internees sleep. He sees they are happy in the fulfilment of the work. These are men who have been bakers and butchers and restaurant owners. They had once been a part of a community. They had greeted their customers each day and showed them their best produce. Prided themselves in its quality. Chatted with them about their domestic lives. Talked about families and sick children and the next holidays. And then one day they arrived at work to find they were declared enemy aliens. The Hun! The customers kept away from their shops. Their incomes fell. Their pride fell lower.

  And then the soldiers came for them. Sullen men with guns. Took them away from their families and their communities and their businesses. They were interned and all they had left was their work.

  Arno moves on. He makes his way around to the eastern wall and suddenly stops. His way ahead is blocked. There is a truck parked up ahead in the thin space between the small infirmary building and the wall. That is rare. Most deliveries from the nearby township are brought by horse and cart. Trucks are for something altogether more serious. The truck’s headlights face him like two eyes. Arno feels a moment of panic. This is the truck from his dreams. His memories have come for him again. He stares at the dark metal body of the truck, and then takes a few steps closer and reaches out and touches it. It is cold and hard. It is real.

  He looks around for any soldiers who might be around this early—knowing only the guard towers are manned at this time of day.

  Trucks rarely come inside the prison. Food and building materials are delivered to the front gate and carried inside by the internees. Something is new today. Something has happened. He shakes off the unsettling feeling that thought brings, and smells the faint bitter tang of exhaust fumes around the vehicle. It has not been there long, he thinks. He looks around once more, then he squeezes up between the truck and the wall and slides down the length of the truck—feeling the chill of the metal and the chill of the stones pressing him between them. It is an uncomfortable feeling. The truck is parked slightly askew and as he reaches the khaki-painted rear of the truck it squeezes him very tightly into the wall. He turns his body sideways and pushes a little. Feels himself jammed—unable to move. He feels his heart starting to beat faster. It sounds to him like rapidly approaching footsteps. Soldiers will come and find him, he thinks. Will point their bayonets at him. Will throw him to the ground. Then cast him into the truck.

  He closes his eye and lets the feeling fade from him—being absorbed into the stone. He then leans heavily on his foremost crutch. Pushes back on it. Until he feels himself breaking free of the grip of the metal and granite. He takes two steps backwards. Then looks down at the ground. He carefully lowers himself to his knees. Then onto his stomach. He is beside the rear wheels and peers under the truck. It is very dark and a little muddy and smells of oil and petrol. He bites his lip a moment, and begins dragging himself forward into the darkness. Keeping his head low. Careful of the sharp gravel under him. Cautious of the hot metal above him. Wary of touching any part of the truck.

  When he emerges again he sees the sky is much lighter now. The rock walls and the truck are a new colour. Like arriving into another world somehow, he thinks. He looks around carefully then gathers up his crutches and slowly stands up. The tailgate of the truck is down and he can see it is empty inside. Wooden benches run down each side—ready for somebody.

  Arno looks from the truck to the small infirmary building. He listens carefully and can now hear murmured voices from inside. He looks at his watch. 7.05. Doctor Hertz, the camp’s doctor, would not normally be in the infirmary until 7.30, checking on any patients that might be there before breakfast.

  Arno considers the truck for a moment and hauls himself up onto the tailgate. From there he can peer into the infirmary window. Like all the prison buildings it has small windows, set up high. But from the height of the truck it is like looking down into some underground bunker. He can see a soldier standing inside the dim room and he can see the tall thin shape of Doctor Hertz. The two men are standing very close together, as if they are discussing something of great intimacy. Arno peers around for Nurse Rosa, but she is not there. She won’t normally arrive from the nearby town of Kempsey to start her day’s work at the infirmary until after 10.00, he knows.

  Then the soldier turns his head closer to Doctor Hertz and Arno can clearly see it is the camp Commandant, Captain Eaton. He is equally tall and thin as Doctor Hertz, but with brown hair that is not as dark as the doctor’s, and with a thin moustache, where the doctor is always clean shaven. They look like brothers, sometimes, Arno thinks. One the good brother and one the evil brother. The Commandant puts his hand on Doctor Hertz’s elbow and draws him a little closer. Talking into his ear. Arno can’t hear the words, but sees Doctor Hertz nod his head as they talk.

  Then suddenly they step apart as Jacob Meyer, the doctor’s intern, walks into the room. He holds out a small silver tray and Doctor Hertz places something on it. He nods to Meyer who turns and leaves them. The Commandant leans closer to Doctor Hertz again and continues talking softly. Doctor Hertz looks back and nods once more. And Arno wants to press his ear up against the window and hear those soft words. Wants to know why the doctor looks so terribly sad.

  He leans out from the truck a little, hoping to see the two men more clearly, and as he does he can now see there is a man on the infirmary bed. He tries to see who it is but cannot make out the face. He tries to remember if the infirmary had any patients yesterday. He thinks it has been empty, and they have not had any patients since last week.

  He raises one crutch against the wall and leans forward from the truck’s tailboard onto it, to peer even a little closer into the room. He leans out until he can reach out one hand and touch the stone wall of the infirmary. And just as he feels the cold hardness under his hand he sees Meyer walk back into the room, holding Doctor Harts small camera. Meyer has used it to take pictures of his misshapen legs for Doctor Hertz, for his medical records. Doctor Hertz has examined him often. Told him that if he had his surgical instruments he could operate on him. Could help him to walk. But as an enemy alien in internment, all he could offer were therapeutic massages to the feet, applied each day by himself or Nurse Rosa.

  And then Arno feels his feet wobble a little. He tries to readjust his stance and realises he is perched too precariously high above the ground to be thinking of the firm fingers of Nurse Rosa running over his legs and feet. Pressing into the flesh as if shaping the muscles and tendons to her liking. The slightest of smiles on her face. Perhaps. Arno tries to concentrate on the men in the infirmary, but can feel the nurse’s fingers against his skin. Can feel his knees are starting to give way.

  Meyer raises the camera, aims and the flash bursts. And Arno Friedrich sees a quick image of the distorted face of Hans Eckert lying on the bed, as if revealed in the dark by a single lightning bolt. His mouth is wide open. Red blood trickling from it. A look of horror on his face, with his eyes empty and dead. His throat ripped out in a bloody mess.

  Arno falls from the tailgate of the truck and lands heavily on the ground. He lies there a moment looking for the khaki legs of soldiers. Waiting for them to surround him. Then lift him to his feet. Press bayonets into his skin. Cast him into the truck again. Take him away somewhere.

  But nobody comes.

  He quickly lifts himself up and steps back into the shadows. Presses himself hard up against the dark granite wall until he is certain no one has heard him. Knows no one is coming for him. Then he crawls back under the truck and then makes his way back around the walls. All the way back around to his wing of the prison and then on to the safety of his own cell.

  He swings open the door and limps in. Lies down heavily on his bunk. Feels sweat all over his body. The taste of fear in his mouth. The memory of Herr Eckert’s face in his mind.

 
He looks across at his cell-mate, Horst Herschell. He is awake and is watching him. His face as drawn as an unfed dog. Arno wants to say something. Tell him that Hans Eckert has died and that his nightmare death has become a reality. That it really happened. That the dream world of the night has entered the day. But Horst sniffs and turns over on his bunk, his face to the wall.

  Arno sometimes thinks of Horst as living, breathing, farting pile of blankets that just happens to occupy space in his cell. He looks at his watch. 7.15. The internees will be waking for breakfast soon, he thinks. Ready to begin the day—thinking of course that it will be just like any other.

  Then he thinks of the dark figure that detached itself from the shadow of the wall in the dream. It must have been Herr Eckert’s dream at the moment of his death, he thinks. Which means he was murdered. By one of his fellow internees!

  The Commandant of the camp, Captain Eaton, sits behind the heavy wooden desk in his office, regarding the death certificate before him, and pondering the report he will have to write. The death will of course be explained as natural causes. The murderer in the prison will need to be found or he will have to hand over the prison to military police. And he knows how they will treat the men from his visits to Holsworthy intern­ment camp near Sydney—where the 5,000 or so men interned there are treated little better than cattle.

  He has over 400 men under his command who have been gathered from their homes and businesses and offices from all over Australia, and even as far as Singapore and Ceylon and Hong Kong and India. There are teachers and merchants and scholars and self-made men. They have been handpicked as the elite and privileged, and sent to this old gaol at Trial Bay, at the mouth of the Macleay River, in northern New South Wales.

  Captain Eaton has repeatedly told the men under his charge that they are the lucky ones. Told them they were chosen because they were well-educated, or were businessmen or professionals, but as such they were expected to behave better than common internees in other camps. They were also given more freedom within the internment camp. Freedom to organised a newspaper and an orchestra and a theatre company. Freedom to run their own small businesses. And freedom to know they are still prisoners, living in an abandoned gaol on a remote peninsula some 300 miles north of the nearest large city—often further from their wives and children.

  The Commandant has a photograph of the internees arriving at the prison in 1915. The men look stunned. Weary. Peering around themselves in disbelief. They were assembled in front of the old prison in their best suits, holding suitcases they had probably brought from Germany many years before, as the guards herded them towards the gates.

  Captain Eaton sometimes wonders what the convicts of the last century had felt when they had been brought to the prison when it was first built? What might a photograph of them have captured? He turns his attention back to the death certificate and thinks of the dead man’s face. The horror on it. Who could have done that, and for what reason?

  Doctor Hertz knows what is at stake here, and will do as he is advised, for the Australian Government has little tolerance of, nor interest in, his internees, and would welcome the opportunity to shut down this remote camp of privilege and send all the enemy aliens to Holsworthy. There was a memo recently about a gang operating in Holsworthy known as the Black Hand. A group of Serbian thugs were running an extortion racket inside the camp. There had been one death there already and the MPs had been sent in. Could it be something similar here, he wonders? Whatever the motive, it seemed that one of the internees, of good breeding and education, was actually a savage murderer? It seemed unbelievable, but what other possibility was there? He would be held accountable regardless.

  He knows the Department of Defence would not be happy with the way he runs the camp, and the way he has ignored the many memos sent to him outlining new censorship requirements, tougher disciplinary measures and more vigilance against sedition. No visitors are allowed that are not sanctioned by the Department of Defence, and almost none ever are. He must ensure no journalists are allowed into the camp under any circumstances. He must ensure that the local population not be allowed near the camp except for essential services. He must ensure discipline and order are maintained amongst his internees.

  His internees! That is how he thinks of them. Though he knows his wife bridles at the expression. She will make a fuss when the news of Herr Eckert’s death reaches her though rumours. She will say it is one less Hun to be worried about. One less potential murderer and child rapist threatening the nearby towns of South West Rocks and Kempsey. Then she will talk of her brother Matthew again. Remind him what a fine man he was, and what a he would have made of his life had he not been killed by the Germans in France.

  Then she will ask him again why he did not feel the urge to request a transfer to France to avenge her brother’s death? Will wait for an answer that she knows he will not give her. But he has never told her of his diagnosis of a weak heart. He knows she would consider it further evidence of his general weakness. As he knows she will retire to bed early with a headache and lock the door of her bedchamber.

  He wonders though if most of the men and women of the nation spent a day inside the prison observing the daily habits of routines of them men under his care whether it would soften the national obsession with demonising them as brutal Huns? He knows they are officially classified as Enemy Aliens, but he finds them neither the enemy nor alien. He also wonders, not for the first time, if it is his own wife’s growing prejudice and hatred towards them that mitigates his own feelings to them?

  His own father had been a mean-spirited man of a thousand petty prejudices and hatreds, and the Captain had resolved as a young man that he would never follow his path, and whenever confronted with bigotry and prejudice he would attempt to look beyond it. Ironic then in that striving so hard not to turn out like his father he had married a woman so much like him in temperament.

  He considers the death certificate again. Natural causes. As if there was some world where a man having had his throat ripped out roughly could be considered natural. What nightmare world exactly might that be, he wonders, and would it ultimately be any crueller than the world he was living in?

  Arno Friedrich looks at his watch. 7.22 am. He can hear the noise of men leaving their cells above and around him. He looks over to Horst Herschel’s bunk. He is looking at him again with that sad look that seemed deep-etched into his face. Neither man says anything. Most days they lie on their bunks, staring across the vast distance between them, occasionally sniping at each other. Horst Herschell tells him that his poor German makes his ears hurt. Arno responds with more badly pronounced words.

  Herr Herschell dreams of a farm he lived on in Germany as a child. But in his dreams the farm is in ruins and the cattle are all dead, and Horst Herschell walks amongst the carnage looking for a young boy that might be himself.

  They have long ago run out of conversation with each other. But if you cannot talk without conflict, then it is better not to talk at all. That is one of the camp’s mottos. They’ve dozens of them, all created by the camp committee—elected internees who ensure there is a motto for everything. A healthy body and healthy mind make for a healthy person. The devil makes friends of idle hands. Camaraderie makes for good comrades.

  Arno Friedrich would prefer: Let each man live in peace and stop inflicting endless mottos on the others. But peace is not a word that is spoken inside the internment camp, for the whole world outside is at War. That is the word that obsesses everybody. But it is another word that nobody will speak.

  Krieg—he whispers it to himself sometimes. Just so he can hear himself saying it. But only ever a whisper, so he doesn’t let in loose inside the prison. For he also fights a daily war with many of those around him, who do not accept him, but who he has taken to protecting from the horrors that dwell in the walls and come out at times to haunt their nightmares. He has this gift for some purpose, he reasons, but he finds
balance in being able to torment and tease his fellow internees in small ways.

  Unlike most of the cells in the prison, theirs is rather sparse of furnishing and mementos. Most of the internees have hung pictures of loved ones on the walls of their cells, or scenic pictures cut from magazines, and have built shelves for books and knick-knacks. Others have built small desks and chairs, that might have a vase or a carving on it, or an embroidered cloth. Things that have some texture that is soft and a scent that is not of stone and iron. Anything to make each cell look a little more like a room rather than what it actually is. But Arno and Horst Herschell either lack the interest or the mementos to surround themselves with. They have one small bookshelf each mounted directly onto the stone walls and a cracked and flaking small mirror that they share, though Arno finds the world looks less grim in the larger ones in the communal bathrooms.

  Arno looks at his wrist-watch again. 7.25. Almost time for breakfast. He says it aloud to Horst, “Frühstück.” One of the few words the elderly man responds to. Then Arno stands up and swings open the cell door. All down the corridor men are emerging from their cells, making their way to and from the washrooms, getting dressed and cleaned for the day ahead. Whatever it may bring.

  “Schinkenspeck mit Eiern,” says Arno to some of the men walking past him. Bacon and eggs. But they pay him no heed. They know it will be Bröt und Haferschleim—bread and porridge. It is rarely anything different than the solid Australian country diet that the men have so long grown sick of.

  Arno grips his crutches and joins the long line of men shuffling slowly down the corridor towards the kitchen. He listens to the mumbling small talk and attempts of the men to hide their despair of another day in prison. And one of them is a murderer, he thinks.