The Years of the Wolf

by Cormick, Craig;

  Then he wonders who will be the first to tell the internees of the death of Herr Eckert? Doctor Hertz? The Commandant? Will an announcement be made at breakfast? Arno looks back to the men either side of him, watching them shaking sleep and dreams out of their heads. There will be no gentle way to tell it.

  When he reaches the front of the breakfast line he is given a plate of porridge and several slices of bread. He knows that it will smell better than it will actually taste, as if the bakers have somehow kneaded the sour dis­appointment of internment into it. He makes his way back to the large dining hall and stands under the entrance archway, looking around at all the men that he knows so well—and also so little. He wonders how they will react? He takes a seat by himself, as is his habit, on the end of one of the long benches and starts eating his porridge. Slowly. Looking around every few mouthfuls, waiting for Doctor Hertz or the Commandant to enter the room. Waiting for somebody to make the announcement. To say the words. To change this day.

  He has a spoonful of porridge poised before his mouth when Herr Herausgeber joins him at the bench. “Guten Morgen,” he says brightly. Arno shoves the porridge into his mouth and nods to the elder man.

  Herr Herausgeber had been a rubber plantation manager in Malaysia. Lonely, middle-aged, balding and divorced. But still a manager! He walks and gesticulates with a nervous energy that makes his limbs look as if they half-turned to rubber themselves. In internment he has turned his frantic energies to editing the camp newspaper, Welt am Montag—the World on Monday. He is a man driven by a fear of failure, Arno knows, and he has a belief that Arno overhears much of the camp gossip from the guards in English and can pass it to him.

  He leans forward a little and tells Arno in a confidential whisper, “I am writing an article on how close the final great advance is, describing how the German army will push the British right back to England soon. Will push them right across the ocean to Australia.”

  He winks as he talks, as if they are confidants in a conspiracy, and his fingers wobble about in the air like toy soldiers. “The German victors will liberate us all,” he says. “They will throw the guards into this prison in our places.”

  Arno has heard all this before. As have most of the men in the prison. But it is Herr Herausgeber’s way of swapping information. He tells you a secret and then demands one of you in return. Arno shrugs, not giving up anything easily, and Herr Herausgeber changes track. “I envy you your youth, do you know?” he asks. Then says, “I know how frustrating it must feel to be denied the opportunity to wear the uniform of the Kaiser, and fight for the Empire. To hasten the defeat of the British.”

  Still Arno says nothing. Herr Herausgeber shows his teeth and scowls. His aggressive side starting to emerge. The one that desperately want to believe that Germany will send troops to this distant part of the Pacific Ocean just to free them. To free him. And how easily they will defeat the men who guard them here.

  “My boy, they are fools,” Herr Herausgeber tells Arno. “Just look at them.” He is always disparaging of the several dozen guards who look over them to anyone who will listen. Badly dressed. Ill-disciplined. Lazy. “A small squad of German troops would over-run these farm boys in fifteen minutes,” he says.

  And he despairs that his precious rubber plantation has been left in the hands of men like these. “They do not have the discipline to run these things properly,” he says. “The British will never win the war if they rely on colonial troops like these.”

  “Peasants!” he says, as if insulted that he is not being guarded by elite British troops. “They are worse than peasants. They are convicts!” he says.

  Arno Friedrich listens patiently to Herr Herausgeber’s tirade, for he is wondering what he will write about Herr Eckert’s death in his newspaper? More to the point, he thinks, what might he be permitted to write about the death? And the whole prison will know the news already, but will undoubtedly devour whatever he writes eagerly. They will point to the words and read them aloud to their cell-mates or comrades, and say, “Listen to what it says here…” And they will all listen, as if it is somehow actual news to them. The power of their own printed words in their own language is another peculiarity of confinement.

  Arno Friedrich looks at his watch. It is 7.45. Doctor Hertz still hasn’t arrived for breakfast and the quickest eaters have already finished. Those with things to do. Jobs in the yard. Clubs to organise. Rehearsals to attend. Many of the elderly men will drag their meal on for as long as is possible though, with nothing else to look forward to but lunch and then dinner.

  “Have you seen Doctor Hertz this morning?” Arno suddenly asks Herr Herausgeber.

  “No. Why? Has something happened?” Herr Herausgeber leans forward over the table, his eyebrows raised way up high on his head.

  Arno just shrugs. Doesn’t want to say yes. Doesn’t want to say no.

  “Is somebody seriously ill perhaps?” asks Herr Herausgeber, sniffing for a story. Prepared to wrangle the information out of Arno. He looks around the hall, trying to see if somebody is not there. “Have you heard something?” he asks Arno.

  Arno makes as if he is squirming a little on the bench. As if he is privy to information that he shouldn’t really be sharing. “Well…” he says, and looks around. And just then Doctor Hertz strides into the hall. A bowl of porridge in one hand and a plate of bread in the other. He sits at a table and the men look up and smile and greet him warmly. He is joined by intern Meyer and Arno sees that some of the men look away, their faces reddening a little, remembering the lust with which they had watched him enter the hall the previous evening.

  Herr Herausgeber turns and watches him. Smiles. Turns back to Arno. “He was brilliant last night, wasn’t he?”

  Arno nods. Jacob Meyer had been Brünnhilde the queen of the Walküries. It was one of his best roles. Dressed in long flowing robes and wig and padded battle armour, he looked ready to carry off those who had died fighting for her. And every man in the hall, for the duration of the play, had wanted to be the one who would die for her. Longed to be carried away in her strong arms, and pressed closely to her breastplate.

  Men dress the parts of Isolde and Salome and other women of mythology, but their favourite is Brünnhilde—warrior princess and Walküre, who selected those who died valiantly in battle to be carried to Valhalla, the hall of the gods. Arno knows that many of the men go to sleep with dreams of her firm fingers on their bodies and wake to the briny smell of guilt and self-pleasure.

  There is a very popular photograph that many of the men possess. It shows a beautiful Fraulein standing by an open window. No bars on it. She is wearing a thin white dress. It can only be a woman at home in Germany, dreaming of her love who is away at the front, or incarcerated in some enemy prison perhaps. They have all dreamed of her at some time. Dreamed of the soft touch of her lips and the firm press of her breasts against them. Dreamed it was not one of their comrades in a woman’s dress.

  During the nights Doctor Hertz uses his skills to transform men into many different roles in their theatre productions—soldiers and warriors—and women—their features well-hidden by the soft lights and make-up. Another transformation between light and day.

  Arno Friedrich watches the doctor begin an animated conversation with the men around him and looks around to see if the Commandant is going to enter the hall now. Then turns back to watch Doctor Hertz as he talks and eats.

  Herr Herausgeber is watching him too, and Arno bites his lip and then changes the subject, “I have heard the Australian guards share your belief that the German troops will come as far as Australia.”

  Herr Herausgeber eyes focus like a bull staring at a taunting cape. “Yes! Did not Australian troops over-run the Bismarck Archipelago? So, it is a matter of pride to take it back from them! Once Paris and London have been taken the Kaiser will send an invasion force and they will chase the Australian troops right back to Sydney and Melbou
rne. They will land on the beach here to liberate us. We will wake up one morning and see the smoke of a dozen German troopships on the horizon. The Australian guards will flee into the bush, of course, and we will welcome our liberators with the gates flung wide open.”

  “That is exactly what I have heard them say,” Arno says, and settles in for the fantasy telling, nodding as if he has never heard any of it before. Thus he doesn’t see Doctor Hertz finishes his meal, make a parting comment to the men around him and then rise to leave, excusing himself with pressing business in the infirmary perhaps. He walks past their table and has almost stepped beyond them when Herr Herausgeber sees him and quickly raises his hand, like a small pupil in school might. “Doctor Hertz,” he says.

  “Yes?” says the doctor, turning to him.

  “Is somebody quite ill?” he asks.

  Doctor Hertz gives a short quick smile and says, “Why yes. Herr Eckert came down with a sudden case of heart disease late last night. He has been taken away to Kempsey already. They will take him onto a hospital in Sydney to treat him.”

  “Heart disease?” asks Herr Herausgeber.

  “Yes,” says the doctor.

  “Is it serious?”

  “It can often be,” says the doctor. Then he asks, “How did you know to ask about him?”

  “Young Arno here told me,” he says.

  “Did he?” asks the doctor, turning to regard Arno carefully. “Did he indeed?” Then he smiles again, briefly, and with little of his characteristic warmth, he turns and quickly strides out of the hall.

  Sergeant Gore holds the small circle of soldiers away from him at arm’s length, pointing his bayonet at them. He moves rapidly from one man to the next, holding it level at their throats.

  “Do you think you can take me?” he asks. “Come and try it!”

  Although he is smaller and older than any of the young privates who stand around him, he has the body of a bull, and none is eager to be the first one to try and take him. The Sergeant’s eyes dart from one soldier to the next, sharper and more menacing than the long metal blade. “Who’s going to be the first then?”

  The soldiers around him move uneasily from foot to foot, perhaps getting ready to spring, perhaps getting ready to step away. Six of them. Tall. Darkly dressed. Like six khaki brothers, whose names didn’t matter anymore. He can see their pale faces scowling in the morning’s first light, and it made Sergeant Gore grin. But he can also see the caution in their eyes. And can see how hard they are trying not to show it.

  “Never had a real fight before, have you?” he says softly. “Not with a real fighter.” One of the soldiers licks his lips a little. Another swallows twice. Sergeant Gore fixes that one with a quick glance, then thrusts the bayonet in the direction of another man, leaving an opening.

  And Private Gunn, a stocky young red-headed local boy, takes it. He jumps quickly. Both hands trying to catch the bayonet hand before it swings back. His is fast for a large youth. Not long in uniform, but he has spent years wresting angry bulls in the stockyards. He knows he can take the Sergeant if he can get in close and catch him around the arm. The Sergeant is much shorter and older. Probably slower too.

  But the Sergeant is faster. One moment Private Gunn has his hands on the arm with the bayonet, the next the Sergeant has him around the throat. Has turned him around. Has forced him down at the knees. Has the bayonet held tightly against the pale soft skin under his chin.

  Private Gunn can feel the strength in the short stocky arms. Can smell the scent of wild victory coming off the Sergeant’s skin. He blinks once. Twice. Sees the startled looks on his mates’ faces. Can hear the Sergeant hissing in his ear, “You’re dead, Gunn!” Then he feels the chill of the steel as it is dragged slowly across his throat. Then feels the force of the Sergeant kicking him to the dirt.

  “That’s how it’s done,” Sergeant Gore says. “You want to be real soldiers? You want to learn how to kill Germans? Well you have to learn a lot more than drilling on a parade ground and shooting at targets on a rifle range.” Then he reaches down and lifts Private Gunn to his feet. Gives his neck only the briefest of glimpses. Knows he isn’t seriously hurt. But knows the younger man will think a little bit harder about trying something so stupid next time.

  “I’m only one man,” says the Sergeant, looking beyond the six men, as if looking thousands of miles away. “If you’d have rushed me all at once I wouldn’t have stood a chance. I would’ve only been able to kill one or two of you at most—and you’d have me. Overwhelmed me by sheer strength of numerical supremacy. Remember that!”

  He looks back at the men. Watches their lips moving as they repeat the words. “That’s what wins battles,” he says.

  The men nod, twitching uncomfortably in their coarse woollen khaki uniforms. Knowing what he is going to ask them next is, are they really willing to fight for the King and Empire? Really willing to fight to protect their loved ones? Really willing to kill the enemy in hand-to-hand combat if they have to?

  But he asks, “What wins battles?”

  “Numerical supremacy,” they say as one.

  “Yes, that’s right,” he says. “And one other thing.”

  The men have to wait for him to tell them.

  “Occasional rat cunning.”

  Barely half an hour after breakfast the whole prison knows that Hans Eckert has been taken to Sydney. Some claim to have heard the truck departing shortly before they awoke. Others claim that Herr Eckert had personally told them that he had not been feeling well, and that his heart was acting up. Others, more elderly, return to their cells and lie down, with their hands over their own hearts, thinking of how active Herr Eckert had been, and wondering if the sudden twinge they feel in their own chests might also be heart disease?

  Only Arno is wondering why the doctor has lied, as he makes his way around the main courtyard after breakfast. Perhaps, he reasons, the doctor does not understand that a nightmare has reached out and killed a man, refusing to be incarcerated in the stone walls around them. Perhaps he believes that someone within the prison has committed murder and he feels that needs to be kept a secret?

  Arno is unsure if he should tell the doctor what he knows. As a man of science, he would most likely not believe him and suspect him of having something to do with the death. Arno doesn’t like that idea at all and so keeps pacing the yard, waiting for the gates to open to the outer world. Like most of the men he has no wish to return to his cell for the day and he goes to join most of the men at the main gates.

  Arno looks at his watch. 9.05 am. The guards are late again. The internees press up close to the gates and mumble loudly. They stare out across the dirt road that leads towards the tree line. Just beyond the prison is thick bushland, with a single thin road running through it. The internees call it, “Der dunkel Wald”—the dark woods. As if it is the place where all things disturbing lurk. They are forbidden to go towards the bushland and there are armed guard posts there. They are told there are poisonous snakes and spiders and wild animals there too. They are told it is dark and unknowable. Arno, being Australian-born, has a different sensibility, and often misses the scent of eucalypts close by. Or the crunch of leaf litter underfoot. The whirrs and clicks of bush insects.

  The internees stand at the gates with their hands on the bars—their fingers on the other side of freedom. And Arno wonders how these men might react if they knew that the walls that inter them held their nightmares, and that they might now somehow reach out and attack them? Then Arno sees one of the soldiers step from the guardhouse and, ignoring the internees, slowly make his way over and unlock the large barred gates. He looks just like any other of the guards—khaki uniform and belting. The guards are more alike than the internees here.

  The men shove against the gates like unruly children, pushing them open, and they flood outside like they are going to a carnival. Arno steps out with them, and pauses. H
e looks around at the wide expanse of ocean all around them, shading his eyes carefully. There is not a single point inside the prison walls from where he can see the bright blue of the ocean, and every morning, as he steps outside, it seems to him to be brighter. It stretches around the peninsula and is so wide that it seems to go forever. It fills him with a feeling of calm and a sense of place that is unachievable inside the prison walls.

  Herr Herausgeber had once told him that you could not photograph the ocean properly here because it was impossible to take it all in. Arno has to turn his head slowly when looking at it all, so that the wider world will not suddenly overwhelm him. He cannot see the smoke of any troop ships out there today. Not even a solitary fishing boat.

  The other internees push past him and advance down the small path away from the prison, down towards the small village of wooden shacks they have constructed around the lower walls. They have built summerhouses and cafes and taverns out of scrap wood and packing cases. Painted backdrops of Alpine mountains and forests hang behind some of them, left over from plays or operas performed in the prison. The small buildings have Germanic names over their doors, saying in Gothic script, Beer Garden or White Horse Inn.

  This is where many of the men spend their days. From 9.00 to 5.00 the gates of the prison are opened and the men are allowed to escape its grey shadows and enter the world of imagining in their small cafes and taverns. They have reconstructed buildings from their youth, from a Germany of the last century that they can distantly remember. Arno has no way of knowing if they have been faithful to their memories or not. He suspects not, but most everything he knows about Germany he has learned from them. The poetry of Goethe that they recite. The music of Wagner and Beethoven that is played in concerts. The look of the Alps and the forests as painted on the canvas sheets behind the small shacks they have built. For all he knows it is just another dream fantasy of the men.

  Arno makes his way slowly past the painted German village down to the beach on the inside of the peninsula. The long white crescent of sand runs away around to the distant entrance to the Macleay River. He stands a long time looking across the wide bay. He looks for any changes in the water. He looks for any boats. Any activity across at the settlement of South West Rocks at the river’s mouth—some 20 miles away.