The Years of the Wolf

by Cormick, Craig;

  Then they hear soft footsteps in the distance. They peer expectantly. It is a man and a woman. They stride into the forest dressed as if they are on their way to a ball. The man has on a dark tuxedo and top hat. And the woman, ah the woman is beautiful. She is young and thin and wears a long flowing gown. Her bust is not too big, nor small, and not too exposed, with a string of pearls hanging invitingly over it. She has blonde hair tied up above her head.

  She hangs onto the gentleman’s arm and looks about in alarm. Then, throwing one hand up to her forehead, she says, “Oh Hänsel, I fear we are lost.”

  “Be strong, dear Gretel,” he says. “We shall overcome all adversity.” She clasps his arm tighter and he smiles into her eyes. They stand there for a moment as if they might kiss—and then suddenly Hänsel looks up and points. “A house,” he says. “We are saved!”

  Now, through the trees they can see there is a house. Light is shining onto it, showing it in a clearing. It is brightly coloured and decorated as if it were made from gold and silver. The thatch on the roof is like thick wheat.

  Hänsel and Gretel make their way over to the house. “Look at these riches,” says Hänsel, and his eyes open wide. “It is beautiful,” says Gretel.

  “We should take just a small amount to sustain ourselves,” says Hänsel. “Do you think we should?” asks Gretel. “But there is plenty for all,” says Hänsel, “And we require so little.” He steps up to the house and begins scrapping at the wall.

  Then the door burst open and an ugly old woman steps out. “Ein Hexe!” says Gretel—A witch! The old woman is wearing a khaki-coloured dress with brass buttons up the front. She points a rifle at Hänsel and Gretel and says, “You are my prisoners!” And at gun point she forces them into the house.

  It takes a while to see clearly on the inside. It is so dim. The walls are tall and dark. Granite blocks. The windows are barred. Hänsel is in a tiny cell and Gretel is slaving over a large pot. The witch is sitting on a chair, drinking and smoking. Gretel looks at her carefully as she works, watching her drink more and more.

  “When will you let my brother free?” she asks her sweetly.

  “When I am good and ready,” says the witch, patting her belly. “Only when I am good and ready.”

  “But we have been prisoners here for over two years now. Surely you realise we can’t do you any harm?”

  “What has harm got to do with it?” asks the witch looking around. “I can keep you here because you are in my power. And anyway, I want to fatten up that brother of yours a little bit more.”

  “But the food you give him is so bland, how can you expect to fatten him up?”

  “I’ll keep him in his cell until he fattens up,” she says. “But tell me, does he look any fatter to you? I can’t see so well.”

  “No,” says Gretel. “In fact, I think he’s losing weight.”

  “You’re not exercising in there are you?” the witch demands, standing up and pointing an accusing finger at Hänsel. Then she sits down heavily. Takes another long drink from her bottle. Belches loudly. Then leans back in her chair, her head nodding slowly.

  Gretel, still stirring the pot, watches and waits. Soon the witch is snoring. Then Gretel lowers the spoon and tip-toes over to her brother’s cell. She places her fingers upon her lips to let him know to be very quiet. Then she tip-toes back to the sleeping witch and pulls a large ring of keys from her pocket. She quickly opens Hänsel’s cell door and the two of them move to the back of the room where they pull something out of a box. They are tall Prussian Guardsmen’s hats. They put them on and Hänsel then snatches up the witch’s rifle and shouts in English, “Up! Up!”

  Gretel kicks the witch’s chair and she falls to the floor. She looks up in surprise to see the two of them now both shouting at her. “Get dressed! Get up! Out! Now!”

  She cowers beneath them and they reach down, grasping her by the arms and drag her into the empty cell. Hänsel slams the door and Gretel locks it tight. Then they embrace and look into each other’s eyes—and then they kiss.

  Private Simpson jumps up with a start and points his rifle into the darkness—ready to fire. Then he realises he has been dozing. The applause and laughter from the audience down in the prison hall has startled him. He thought—just for a moment—that it was that distant roar of an attacking enemy on the Western Front.

  Private Gunn, a local boy, is sitting in the barracks snapping the newspaper in front of him. Over and over. As if crackling the paper might affect the words somehow. Might make them fly around the barracks and assault the other men the way they are attacking him. He had been reading the roll call of the dead and missing, and finds it overwhelms him. So many new names every day. You could cut them out and start sticking them up on the walls of the prison, he thinks, and you’d soon fill the whole prison walls in them. The idea of that many dead is more than he can take in, so he turns to things in the paper than he can better grasp.

  “Listen to this,” he says in a loud voice, his face reddening like his short-cropped red hair. “Just listen to this and see if your blood doesn’t boil. It says here that the Hun have not only raped and murdered nuns in Belgium, but that they have chopped the hands off little children.”

  He looks up over the top of the newspaper to see that the men around him are listening. Are looking at him. Then he snaps the newspaper again. “It says here that there are dozens of children in Britain, refugees from France and Belgium, with no hands! Chopped off by the Hun!” His voice breaks a little. “’Struth! Dozens of ’em, it says.”

  He folds the newspaper and throws it the man next to him. “They’re animals,” he says. “I can’t wait to get over there and teach them a lesson.”

  He looks around the barracks and his eyes catch those of another member of the Dark Knights. They nod at each other silently.

  The man on the bed next to his though, Private Cutts-Smith, a wounded veteran of France with a large angry red scar across one whole side of his face, hands the newspaper back to him. And as he does, he turns his face so the normal side is facing Private Gunn.

  “No,” says Gunn. “Read it. Read what they’re doing to women and child­ren. It’d make you want to sign up again to go back over there—sure it would.”

  But Private Cutts-Smith shakes his head a little. “I don’t reckon any­thing’s make me want to go back over there again.”

  “But read what it says,” says Gunn, still red in the face. “It says they’re killing nuns and children.”

  “It says that in the paper, does it?” asks Private Cutts-Smith slowly. He holds Private Gunn’s glance a moment, then turns his head the other way to stare at him from the burned and twisted side of his face. He lets the newspaper fall onto Private Gunn’s bed and he lies down and looks up at the ceiling. Perhaps remembering all the stories about the front that he’d ever read in the papers before he got there.

  Arno sees the dark figure making his way down the corridors of the old prison towards him. Sees the slow predatory gait and thinks it might be the man-beast returned. And he thinks in an instant that he has misunderstood the creature—it might not be Herr Eckert’s own night­mare that had slain him, but the nightmare creation of one of the other men, who is knowingly or not, slaying his fellow internees through his nightmares.

  But the figure, he now sees, is not walking down the corridors as he first thought; it is making its way through a dark forest. Dead branches reach down to pluck at the figure, but it expertly weaves its way through them. It is hunting something. Arno can feel the emotions in the figure. Lust and hunger. They mask the identity of the dreamer as effectively as the dark cloak it wears. He can only follow the dream and hope to identify which of his fellow internees it is at some point.

  The figure slows and moves more cautiously now. It is close to its prey. It moves to a large tree and peers around it. Arno can hear soft children’s voices on the other side
. A young boy and girl. The figure watches them closely and sees they are lost. This fills the figure with glee. Then the boy and girl see a house through the woods and run towards it. The figure follows them and then the background changes and they are in the house. Or an office. Or a school room. And the young boy and girl are captive inside it.

  The young boy is in a cage and the young girl is doing domestic chores. She sweeps and bends over to pick things up. The figure is not in the room with them though. He is in a nearby room peering in through a hole in the door. He watches the young girl closely. Watches the way she bends over, revealing a glimpse down her top, or the shape of her rump.

  She is not a young child anymore. She is perhaps fifteen or sixteen. Not an adult either. Her low-cut blouse allows a view of her small breasts when she bends over, and her dress is short enough to see the shape of her legs.

  The lust and hunger in the figure watching is frantic now, and Arno can feel the desire building as the figure frees his dick and starts violently rubbing himself. The girl perhaps knows he is there—but perhaps not, yet starts moving her hips a little, as to encourage him.

  Arno can feel the figure’s climax building. Can feel the lust possessing him as if turning him into a wild beast. He wants to reach out and grab the girl. Throw her to the ground and rip her clothes off. Press his body to hers. Taste her skin in his mouth. But he makes no move to come closer to the dream girl. He does not attack her. He just stands there watching. And rubbing himself furiously.

  Until the climax comes. Like an earthquake shaking the dream apart.

  And as the dream fades into feelings of relief and pleasure and shame, Arno knows the figure. Recognises the man as the transforming lust fades. It is Herr Herausgeber. He has had similar dreams before. The dreams of a man with a dark side to his passions, and Arno wonders if those passions might be strong enough to lead to another’s death?

  2

  Another Day

  Arno is making his way around the prison walls again in the pre-dawn darkness, running his hands across the cold stone walls, trying to find any trace of Herr Herausgeber’s nightmare when he sees movement up ahead of him. He moves a little closer to the wall. Cautiously. Then sees it is a man being set upon by two or three others. Their outlines are dark and indistinct. Even the sounds they make are muffled, like they are coming from a long way away. Suddenly one of the figures glances up and sees him. It snarls, or something like it, and pulls the other figures away into the darkest shadows.

  By the time Arno reaches the place they are gone. He looks around on the grass beneath his feet and there is no indication that anyone had ever been there. He touches the wall at that spot and is certain he can feel an angry growl vibrating softly through his hands.

  He stands there for the longest of times, no longer certain that his understanding of the worlds of dark and light are correct. No longer so certain that he has any power to protect the other internees in the prison. Wondering if he is in a dream of his own or not.

  The news is all around the dining hall the next day, before Herr Heraus­geber has even arrived to hear it. Herr Eckert has died on the journey to Sydney. A doctor had declared him dead on arrival. Heart disease. It could kill anyone at any time. The news makes for a very quiet morning meal. Many men stare silently into their porridge, stirring lumps around in the bowls or stirring thoughts around in their minds. It is their first death in the camp. The first real reminder of their mortality. It makes them remember there is still a wider world out there—a world still at war. That unspoken word.

  Arno sees Horst is particularly shaken by the death. His face looks pale and he goes back to their cell after having only a few nibbles at his bread. Arno imagines he will be lying back on his bunk now, turning into that living breathing pile of fetid blankets, wondering if he too is about to die suddenly? Wondering perhaps if he could at least get to Sydney before he dies? Wondering if that would be worth it?

  Horst’s wife and two small children are in Sydney. He doesn’t talk about them much, but he writes incessantly—and he receives letters regularly. His wife prints in a tiny hand that is near indecipherable to anyone but Horst. It looks like some sort of a code to Arno. When Horst gets the letters he lies on his bunk and reads them and re-reads them all day long. Then he adds them to the cardboard box of letters he has on his shelf. Some days he will take them all out and sort through them, as if putting a jigsaw puzzle together.

  Arno has been Horst’s cell mate for two years now and he doesn’t even know the names of his children. Doesn’t even know their ages. Maybe he’d told him once, when they were still speaking, but it has long since faded from his memory. He often wonders why Horst doesn’t display any pictures of them though. Most of the internees with family have pictures of their wives and children stuck up above their beds. They go to sleep looking at their wives, and cuddling the memories of their bodies with them, and wake up to the smiles of their children.

  But the two of them have no reminders of family on display. Horst because he hides them and Arno because he doesn’t have any. He wonders if it would be worse living in a cell where every day he would look up and see another man’s family—wife and children, or parents and grandparents. Perhaps a photo of a child in Germany, standing by a parent, holding his father’s hand. But would he wake up each morning and imagine that the photo was of himself? Was his own father?

  And Arno suddenly resents Horst for not having pictures of a father on his wall and for hiding them from him. Like he hides so much from him. He’s woken some nights and thought he could hear Horst sobbing quietly, and looked across to see him masturbating under his blanket. That is something else nobody talks about. Though some warm Saturday mornings, after one of the more erotic plays, the cells reek of the humid fug of semen.

  Arno wonders how the convict men of the previous generation had fared. Whether the guards worked them to a point of fatigue to keep their callused hands from flogging themselves, or whether they engaged in more hidden activities? He knows there are some men in the prison who are more affectionate with each other than is talked about. He’s heard the soft moans of cell mates on his early morning circuit of the walls. Heard the groans of passion and release escaping up through the bars and knows the dreams that some men have of finding love in another man’s arms. But it is also never spoken of.

  It is said that the French and English might engage in homosexuality—but the Germans, never! Yet Arno knows, like all the internees know sooner or later, that they are as human as each other. For so very few of them have ever looked at another man on the beach, and suddenly felt as giddy as if a wave had tipped them sideways. There are so many emotions and passions locked up inside the men, all locked up in the old prison.

  And then Arno sees Herr Herausgeber arrive to breakfast. He watches him sit down at a distant table and sees him hear the news of Herr Eckert’s death from those around him. He too shows shock and sadness. But Arno can see he is already planning how best to write the story. Should he talk to the dead man’s friends, or write a long metaphorical obituary of him as a hero—the first amongst their comrades to fall?

  Arno gathers his crutches and limps over to the editor’s side. “I’ve just heard the news,” he says to the older man. “It is tragic isn’t it.”

  “Yes, my boy,” says Herr Herausgeber, shaking his head. “I cannot understand how such a thing can happen so suddenly.”

  “Heart disease,” says Arno, and also shakes his head.

  “Terrible. Terrible,” says Herr Herausgeber, stirring his breakfast around and around.

  “I’ve heard,” says Arno, lowering his voice, “that it is brought on by masturbating.” He gathers his crutches and limps out of the hall, leaving Herr Herausgeber with a spoon full of porridge frozen half-way between his plate and his gawping mouth.

  At 9.00 Arno is again standing at the prison gates, looking at his watch, waiting for
the guards to come and open them. When the guard finally steps out of the guardhouse, he smiles to some of the men he knows by name and makes a big fuss of putting the key into the lock just so, as if it is some vastly complex task that needs great skill to perform. Finally, he stands back and the internees push the gates open and surge out.

  Arno follows, shielding his eyes from the bright blueness of the ocean. It seems so much brighter than it had been the day before. So large. So calming. He breathes in the scent of the land and the sea. It is quite windy today and he knows the language of the wind through the trees and shrubs is an unknown language to many of the internees, while the language of the wind through the barred windows is one that they have learned.

  He turns his head slowly, looking for the smoking stacks of ships. Looking for anything new. But like the day before there is nothing, so he follows the internees down past the little village of cafes and inns towards the beach. It is still windy even on the inside of the headland, and many of the men do not come all the way down to the sands. The athletics club is there on the beach, of course. They are always there. It is a matter of pride and principal for them. But few of them are going into the water.

  Arno makes his way across the sand and then down the water’s edge. He stops there and turns back to look at the prison walls behind him. No matter where you look on this beautiful headland those stark stone walls always draw your eyes back to them, he thinks. And Arno wishes that for just one day he was rid of them. Wishes he could sit somewhere and not have to see the prison. Wishes he could find a small cove somewhere sheltered from the wind where he could see only the ocean and the sky. No prison, no guards, no inmates—and no granite walls.