The Years of the Wolf

by Cormick, Craig;

  He turns and looks along the breakwater across the bay and he wonders how far he would have to go to find somewhere that was far enough to be free of the prison, but where the war hadn’t yet reached? He looks towards the northern end of the bay, towards the low shape of Freedom Island—and he stares at it and wonders how it got that name—and wonders if it too might just be a fantasy?

  Arno folds his clothes carefully and places them by his crutches. He turns and limps into the water, making his way out until it is above his thighs and then he drops quickly up to his armpits. He exhales sharply. Feels his testicles retreat. Squeezes his legs together a little. There is a chill current in the bay today. He flaps his arms back and forth under the water, getting the blood moving. Then he turns and begins swimming with a strong slow stroke that carries him steadily onwards.

  The wind is raising waves about him today. They batter him in the face as he swims, slapping him as he tries to take a breath and pushing water into his mouth. He lowers his head and keeps swimming. It will be much rougher further out, he thinks.

  Soon he stops and treads water. He feels the strength in his legs as they kick beneath him, holding him up. He feels the emptiness beneath his feet. The chill of the deeper current down there. The cold water makes him think of sharks. He has been told they like to follow cold currents. Several have been sighted in the bay and they have built a little watchtower on the sands where men take it in turns to watch for the dark menacing shadows in the water.

  Arno turns and looks to the raised chair. It is empty today. He wonders whose turn it is to be on guard duty? Then he turns and looks to the prison. He can see a guard in the southwest watchtower there watching him. Perhaps. He wonders if he can see sharks from there. It is a much better height, but too far away to shout any warning though. But not too far away for the guard to shoot him if he needed. And he wonders if he could ever be driven to want to kill another man. He tries to feel deep within himself if he could. Then he suddenly feels the skin on his legs turning to goose bumps, as if something chill and dark had come very close to him. He turns and swims quickly back to the shore, leaving that knowledge that had touched him out in the chill currents of the bay.

  Captain Eaton is sitting in his office, under the portrait of his King and the two crossed flags, and is staring at Sergeant Gore, who stands stiffly to attention in front of him. “So you are saying your investigation has achieved nothing?” he asks the Sergeant tersely. Though it was difficult to expect it to have really, he knows, considering the Sergeant does not know how Herr Eckert was murdered. He has only told him that he was found dead in his cell and that foul play was suspected.

  The Sergeant has just reported to him that Herr Eckert had few friends, no known enemies, and did not appear to be involved in either gambling or illicit alcohol production or consumption.

  The Sergeant does not meet his eyes. Staring fixed at the King. “But I am sure you have done your best,” he tells the Sergeant, softening his tone.

  The Captain had reported to his wife the previous evening that one of the internees had died, with even less information than he had given the Sergeant, and she had reacted as expected, cursing his Hun soul to damnation.

  “The man was a businessman, not a soldier,” he had protested.

  “He was a Hun!” she had replied. “We should never have let them into the country. We should put them on leaky boats and sent them to prison camps on remote desert islands.”

  “There is hardly cause for that,” he had said.

  “If you don’t see it you are a fool, or a coward,” she had told him.

  She would fit in well in the Department of Defence, he thought, and despite his promises to himself he had carried the pricks of her barbed words into work with him, making him short-tempered.

  “Sergeant,” he says, in what he hopes is more comradely tone than he is used to addressing the man with, “These are troubling times.”

  “Yes sir!” barks the Sergeant. Captain Eaton feels his shoulders sag just a little. He wonders if he could share his burden with this man? Wonders if he has a distant wife as well? Wonders if could just talk to him?

  “Sergeant,” he says again, realising he does not even recall his first name, “I am greatly troubled. Assaulted on all fronts, as it were. Our position is perilous.”

  The Sergeant says nothing. Remains at attention. Staring fixedly up at the portrait of the King, as if it might be addressing him personally.

  Captain Eaton brings his hands together and knots his fingers tightly. Then he separates them. Then knots them again. “The death of Herr Eckert is not good for us, you understand. Not good for us at all.”

  The Sergeant says nothing.

  “And things are a bit awkward on the home front,” the Captain adds, staring down at the desktop. “Not as good as I’d like them to be. Not getting the type of support I would like, don’t you know?”

  Still Sergeant Gore says nothing. Good, thinks Captain Eaton, the man is a listener. “I’ve been trying to determine how to improve the situation, but it’s not easy, not easy at all. We’re so isolated here, after all.”

  He looks up and sees the Sergeant’s eyes glance at him briefly, clearly having no idea what he is talking about. “And news from the front is not good,” he continues. “So many good lads dying, and we’re stuck here unable to do anything about it.” He shakes his head a little. Feels his shoulders sagging again. Lifts them.

  “I don’t quite know what to do, Sergeant.” He stares at the man who nods his head and says, “Yes sir!” Then snaps his attention back up to the portrait of the King on the wall.

  Captain Eaton stares at him for a while. He is a little envious of the man’s war experiences. His control over the men. His respect from them. He knows how different that makes them, and knows he will never really be able to talk to him.

  “That will be all,” he says.

  “Sir!” barks the Sergeant and spins on one foot. He stamps the other down hard and marches out of his office. Captain Eaton waits until he is gone before letting his shoulders sink heavily down around him once more.

  It is 11.07 by Arno’s watch and he is in the infirmary with Nurse Rosa. She has lifted one of his feet against her thighs as she massages it, turning it one way and then the other, working on the muscles within.

  Arno has his eyes half closed and is looking down between his legs at her. Her brow is slightly knit, concentrating on her work. Then she suddenly looks up at him and smiles. “The other foot,” she says in German.

  “Ja,” says Arno. Then he asks, “Where did you learn your German?”

  “In school,” she says. As she says whenever he asks.

  But today he wants a different answer. “Do you know what I think?” he says.

  “No. Tell me.”

  “I think you might have learned it from a family member.”

  She gives him a sharp look. “And why might you think that?”

  He shrugs. “It is just something I imagine.”

  “Tell me what else you imagine,” she says, still working on his leg.

  “I imagine your mother or father was German,” he says.

  “Nein,” she says. “They were French.”

  “Your grandmother then?”

  She does not answer.

  “What was she like?” he asks.

  “All I will tell you is that she was wise enough to tell me not to answer any dangerous questions like that,” she says.

  “Do you remember her well?” Arno asks.

  “I remember many things about her. What do you remember of your grandparents?”

  “Nothing,” he says. They had never left Germany. A country he has never visited.

  “Then your parents?” she asks.

  He wants to tell her those few memories that he has of them. He has a distant misshapen memory of his father guidin
g him along some bush track, holding his hand to keep him from stumbling. Has another ill-formed memory of suckling his mother’s breasts as an infant. And snuggling up between them both in bed—the softness of his mother and the tough firmness of his father. But he suspects they are as much imaginings as memories. His earliest solid memories are of being shunted between smiling but unspeaking aunts. One, small and fat and smelling of cabbages and vinegar, took his reluctant hand and led him to school, and another, thin and unsmiling, picked him up afterwards. None of them seemed to know what to do with the young crippled boy. Until he was old enough to go out to work. But who wanted a migrant worker who was unfit for any manual work? So, he had trained his brain. Learned English. Learned a little accounting. Learned to be useful in an office. But he also learned that no matter how much of the language he acquired he would never really be accepted here. He would always be a migrant—a boy without a country as much as he was a boy without a family.

  “My family are not very interesting,” he says. “Tell me more about yours.”

  But she will not be drawn any more. “Enough questions about me,” she says. “Tell me some news from inside the camp instead.”

  The ways she says camp makes it sound as if it could be a fun place to live, like some kind of an adventure, rather than imprisonment.

  “There is nothing much,” he says. Nothing except Herr Eckert’s death, he thinks.

  She turns his foot a little to one side. “Well what are the men talking about this week then?”

  He knows he is meant to say, “Just the usual.” Though he knows that down in their cafes and clubs by the walls of the prison the men talk guardedly of two main things: the war and sex—which are both talked of in euphemisms. But Nurse Rose must suspect that the men talk of her, as they watch her like a wolf watches its prey whenever she walks through the yard wearing her little red cape and cap. She must know that some men circle around the infirmary building all day, longing for just a glimpse of her, and if not for Doctor Hertz, men would be wounding themselves just to be admitted to her care. Just to be near her. Arno knows they would cut themselves with knives or would bite their fingers off, or would scald their chests with hot water, if only she would be the one who would treat them.

  But Doctor Hertz has made it very clear that he will not treat any cases that look slightly self-inflicted, and that Nurse Rosa is only there as his assistant. Which makes many men resent Arno. Most are too polite to say it, but some have told him he is a faker. Told him he could walk, except that then the Nurse wouldn’t jerk him off every day. Some resent his treatments by her hands so much that they have told him that he should never have been allowed out of Holsworthy with them, for he is not really an elite like they are. Then they will tell him that his German accent is worse than a Frenchman’s or a Pole’s, and that he tortures the words of their mother tongue. But then they might calm down again and plead with him to describe in detail what she does to him each day.

  He decides that the next time someone asks him, he will tell them, “She dances for me.” But what he says to Nurse Rosa is, “They are concerned about Herr Eckert’s death.”

  Nurse Rosa looks at him and he sees the sadness pass across her face. “Yes. I heard about his heart condition. It was very sudden I was told.”

  “Was he being treated here for it?” Arno asks.

  “No. It was unknown until he fell sick.”

  “They lay him right here on this bed,” says Arno.

  She nods again, then thinks. “How did you know that?”

  And Arno thinks of telling her then. Feels that she is one person he can trust in the prison, and he can tell her that he saw Herr Eckert there, and he knows he did not die of heart disease. He can tell her that he saw the blood and the look of terror on the dead man’s face, and that intern Meyer took a photograph of his body. That they know he was murdered, even if they don’t know it was by a nightmare creature, but are covering up. That she needs to know what type of man the doctor is.

  He feels he could just say it. Just keep talking to her and say it. But then, as if summonsed by his thoughts, Doctor Hertz walks in.

  “How are you feeling?” he asks Arno. As he asks every day. Arno looks up and says, “Good enough.” As he answers every day. Then the doctor puts one hand on Nurse Rosa’s shoulder and she turns to smile at him. A warm smile that Arno has never seen before.

  “We have to discuss some patient photographs when you are finished,” he says.

  “Not long now,” she says, and looks back to Arno’s leg, but with that smile still on her face. Arno lies back and closes his eyes, thinking that he understands a little better now the jealous feelings the men have towards him.

  Arno makes his way into the cell just in time to see the small bird fly up from Horst’s bunk and speed out the window. He only catches a quick glimpse of its tiny pale body with a streak of red in it somewhere. It must have landed on the barred windowsill and for some reason decided to fly into the cell. It had settled on the bunk beside Horst there. Why had the small bird not feared Horst? He thinks all this in the time it takes for the bird to speed out the cell window. And then he sees Horst’s hands fly up after it, as if attempting to follow it out of the bars and away.

  Then he sees his own diary open on the bed in front of Horst. He looks at it. Looks at Horst. His cell mate closes it and throws it to Arno’s bunk. Shrugs. Mutters, “Mad ramblings!” And he turns away from him.

  In the afternoon Arno has time to fill and he wanders down to the small village the men have built outside the lower walls, deciding to treat himself to a meal. He is still trying to understand the danger he feels they are all in during the darkness. He goes into one of the huts there, grandiosely proclaiming itself the Cafe Alpine. A group of men are sitting inside, staring at pictures on the walls. Some are of Alpine scenes from Germany, or perhaps Switzerland. Tall peaks with snow on them. Some are shots of German towns, and some are of women, smiling at the camera.

  Arno sits by himself and watches the way they stare with a deep need at the soft curves of those female bodies. These men without homes. Men without women. Men with nothing but their fantasies and memories. He has shared the dreams of all of them. The longing for a wife, a girl from one’s youth and even the rotund man with the dark moustache, Herr Schmidt, who dreams unashamedly of his childhood teddy bear climbing into his bed and fondling him.

  The cafe proprietor comes over and Arno orders beer and veal. Bier und Kalbfleisch. Then he sits and waits and thinks again of Herr Eckert, and Nurse Rosa, and the doctor, and he watches the men again watching the pictures on the walls. As if it is all a part of a big puzzle.

  The men’s conversation is about memories of home. What a town looked like in winter. What a particular dish tasted like. What an old girl­friend’s smile was like. But their eyes never leave the pictures.

  After a while his meal is brought to him. Arno eats slowly. Bier und Kalbfleisch. But he knows it is mutton dressed as veal. Knows it is ale dressed as beer. As he knows they are men dressed as women.

  That evening’s play is announced during dinner. It will be the story of Pandora’s box. Many of the men wink at each other and laugh. It is a crude expression that most are familiar with. They haven’t had a saucy play for some time and so they are settled into the audience extra early, tapping their feet and fidgeting. Waiting expectantly.

  The orchestra plays briefly. Something sultry that few know the name of and most do not care. They are all awaiting the play. Waiting for Scheherazade to come on stage. Waiting to watch her move slowly from one side to another, her hands encircling her body like caresses, slow and fast and slow again.

  When she finally comes they aren’t disappointed. She is in good form this evening. As she removes one of her many veils, she says, “Tonight, the story of Pandora. The first woman on earth—given to man to prove his undoing.” She dances again. “Fashioned by the g
ods of Olympus at the request of Zeus, father of the gods, to bring ruin to mankind.” Again the hands encircling her body. “She was given life by Athena. Beauty by Aphrodite. And she was taught guile and treachery by Hermes—then she was sent to the realm of men.”

  She dances to the edge of the stage and then pauses. “Pandora was the most beautiful of women, but she had a casket that contained all the evils of the world, and had been bidden by Zeus never to open it. But could woman be trusted? That is the subject of our play.” Then with a flourish she is gone.

  Now a single violin sounds. A high slow lament. And Pandora walks onto the stage. All the men in the audience stop breathing. She is stunning. She wears a long flowing white gown, such as the ancient Greeks must have worn, wrapped tightly around her body, leaving the arms exposed. Her breasts are accentuated by two thongs of leather wound over her shoulders and crossing over her chest. She moves slowly, walking barefoot, with the motion of a slow-moving wave, gently swaying as she makes her way to the centre of the stage. Her thick black hair is bound into a long single plait with more leather thongs. It hangs straight down her back, past her waist. Long enough to climb up. But her face is heavily veiled—as the face of the first woman, the most beautiful woman in the world, should be.

  She walks to the front of the small stage, looking out beyond the aud­ience, and then takes a deep breath, lifts her arms and breasts high as she does so. Every man in the hall rises slightly in their chairs with her. Then she begins to dance. A dance without music, but a dance that needs none. Slow graceful steps, with her hands moving in wide circles about her, then darting in close and shooting out again. Something wild and graceful in the moves.

  She dances to the centre of the stage and then bends over low, swaying her hands right down to touch the floor. Then she stands up slowly, both hands running up her legs, climbing up her shins and thighs, lingering ever so slowly at her waist and then the fingers spread across her stomach until they come to rest under her breasts. She cups them for just an instant and then brings her hands up to her face, as if they are not her hands but the hands of her lover. The hands of every man there in the hall.