POPCORN

by Victor Gischler

  He turns. His eyes dig into mine.

  “Sergeant Major Richard I. MacLachlan,” he says. “What does the I stand for?”

  “In… Ishmael, Sir.” No chance I’d lie to the big man.

  “Ishmael,” he repeats. “Of the Second Commando Brigade.” A statement, not a question.

  “Yes Sir.”

  “How come you have been relegated to support operations, Sergeant Major?”

  I'm sure he already knows. “I punched Second Lieutenant Barr in the face, Sir.”

  “Second Lieutenant Thomas A. Barr?” he asks.

  “Yes, Sir.” I'm sure that the A is for arsehole. Not that he ever said what it stood for.

  “I’m pretty sure he deserved it. Please have a seat.” He gestures towards a chair I hadn’t noticed, just left of the door. I sit. The bigwigs never tell you to sit.

  The American stands up and solemnly walks away, into the next room. The big man turns his chair to face me and sits on it. “I'm told you can keep a secret, Sergeant,” he says.

  “Aye… yes, Sir, I can. Like all good soldiers.”

  “Don’t give me stock answers, Sergeant MacLachlan.”

  “If I may, Sir, it's not a stock answer. I'm a Commando, Sir. Highly trained to...”

  “I'm aware of your training, Sergeant. I helped design it.”

  “I’m sorry Sir.”

  “Don’t apologize. Someone made your name as someone who can keep his mouth shut. Well, Sergeant, your country needs you.”

  “I'm…”

  He interrupts me. “I know. Your country needs you to do something else now. You speak fluent German, don’t you?”

  “I do, Sir, yes. My mother was Austrian, I learned the language.”

  “Very good. Mister Edwards, please?” He turns around and looks at the civilian.

  The man takes his glasses off and rubs his eyes. “Yes, well… there would be the need for… eh…” He has a Welsh accent. “I'm sorry.” He draws his breath. “Well, an elite Commando is required for a very special, very secret mission. You have been selected.”

  “Are you up for it, Sergeant?” the Brigadier asks.

  “If I may, Sir, what is the mission?”

  “I'm not at liberty to provide you with any details, Sergeant. Major Driscoll, who was in this room with us some minutes ago, will give you further details as he accompanies you.

  I’m not asking you if you have any questions because I have no answers I can give you.

  The driver who brought you here has gone to pick up your things. I’ll leave you with Edwards now.” He stands up and leaves. Edwards looks at me. He looks like a frightened rabbit. Afraid I’d ask a question I guess. I don’t.

  Minutes later, the American comes back. I stand up and salute. Doing so I look straight in his face for the first time. He's not as old as I 'd thought he was. Tired, rather.

  He comes closer to me and puts a hand on my shoulder. “You don’t need to salute,” he says in a very low voice. “Are you ready?”

  I relax. “I'm always ready, Sir. But what do you want me to be ready for?”

  “To leave, Sergeant. To go to Switzerland.”

  “Switzerland? Don’t we need to cross the enemy lines to get there?”

  “We do. But don’t you worry.”

  As he says that, I start hearing the engine of a car getting closer.

  “That must be Johnson,” says Driscoll. It is.

  We get in the car. My holdall's in the boot, as the Brigadier had promised. Not that I have much, but there are a few things I'd be sorry to leave behind. I guess I'll have to, eventually. Everybody does. But not yet. I'm not ready to die.

  Johnson drives us south, to a small airport. The American doesn’t speak much during the drive, and I don’t dare to start talking. We get on a plane. A Red Cross plane. Smart. Not even the Nazis will shoot down a Red Cross plane. Probably. Anyway, we take off. It's bloody noisy. But I doze off anyway.

  * * *

  Driscoll wakes me up as we descend towards a small city. “Bern!” he says.

  “I’m sorry, Sir?” I have to raise my voice to be heard over the roar of the plane.

  “That is Bern, the capital of Switzerland! That’s where we're going,” he says.

  Bern. I've never heard of the place. Fuckin’ wee for a capital by the way. But there are lights on. At night. During the war. A luxury that the Swiss can afford by remaining neutral. Fuck neutral.

  From my point of view, if you are not fighting the Nazi you are supporting them. Also they speak German in Switzerland, don’t they? Like the Nazi. Point made. Anyway. I'm with Americans. Or rather, one American. One that Brigadier Tod trusts. Good enough for me.

  We land. A car is waiting for us. We're driven into town. It looks nice. Boring nice. Vanilla.

  The car drives into a parking garage inside a squat building. Several military men are busying around. One comes towards the car. He's wearing an American uniform. He's also older than most of the guys around. Older than me.

  Driscoll jumps out of the car and shakes the man’s hand. They smile at each other. I get out as well.

  “Sergeant MacLachlan, this is Major Taylor,” Driscoll says. I salute.

  “No need to salute,” Taylor says. “Welcome to the team, Sergeant MacLachlan. Richard. Please follow me.”

  I do.

  Taylor unlocks a heavy door and opens it. It leads to a staircase. On the left it goes up, on the right it goes down. Of course he starts going down. And I follow.

  Three floors down. Is this Hitler’s fuckin’ bunker? Then a corridor. Not very talkative, that Taylor fella. I like people who don’t talk much. He stops in front of a small door and opens it.

  A wee, tidy room. A bed, a cupboard, a sink.

  “Your quarters for the time being, Richard. Your holdall will be brought here in a few minutes. You have a couple of hours to rest, then we’ll bring you up to speed.”

  “Thank you Sir.”

  “Drop that Sir, man. It’s Dean,” he says.

  “Agreed… Dean. Call me Ishmael.”

  Gerico

  The snow makes the pine needles look greener. The smell of the trees is powerful. My boots creak on the white layer from which tree roots peek out like dark veins.

  I don’t understand. I swear I've heard something move.

  Then all doubts disappear. I hear a crack.

  A twig breaking.

  I ready my M1 Garand to make sure I’m prepared.

  As I turn, I see a Jerry. He's aiming his rifle at my chest. His teeth are rotten, his smile is dirty. He looks like an animal smelling blood.

  I shoot, point blank.

  My shot shatters the silence. The bullet flies away from me, upwards, and punches a hole in the Nazi’s uniform. Right in the chest. His eyes open wide. Blood erupts from the wound, an arc and then a scarlet band on the white, soft ground. The Hun falls on the snow like a bag full of shit.

  That’s all I manage to do.

  Everything else hits me like a hurricane.

  A shining blade cuts the air. I par it with my rifle. I hold it like a mace and manage to hit the arm of the second Kraut. But he doesn’t give up. He charges again and tries one more chop, high to low.

  Swish.

  The blade cuts into nothing as I avoid it jumping to one side. But my foot comes down on some ice. I fall and slide. I lose my rifle. I fix in my eyes the golden eagle on my Alpini hat as it flies away.

  “Shit,” I scream, and my breath becomes a boiling rasp. My voice is gruff, it breaks against my teeth. I try to stand up again, I unsheathe my hunting knife. But the Nazi is on top of me again.

  “Du Arschloch,” he belches.

  I'm still on the ground. I do the only thing I can think of: I stab his boot with all my strength, as if I was trying to put fucking Excalibur in its bloody stone. My knife cuts through the shoe and bites on flesh.

  “Graurrr” The Jerry screams in pain, nailed down by my blade.

  He doesn’t give up
. He jumps on me while I try to stand up to finish him.

  We roll down a slope while he keeps yelling and tries to gut me. I grab his wrists and try not to get killed. We dance in a cloud of snow and soil. Pine needles, branches, roots.

  Everything happens too fast. Thousands of tiny blades of ice and mud cut my face, I feel my clothes rip, I scream while he growls. Everything lasts a few endless seconds, then…

  Then I see the ravine jump at me. I try desperately to grab on to something while my hands get cruelly scratched all over. They're covered in red.

  Snow, soil, wood.

  Snow, soil, wood.

  Fuck.

  I catch a root. My hand grabs it while my body goes all around like the hand of a watch. My wrist is close to breaking but I hold on. The lower part of my body is off the cliff, my legs are kicking into nothing.

  I breathe.

  I breathe pain. My muscles are tense as they can be and are burning like hell. But the worst is yet to come. The Jerry's still there, holding on to my leg. He's dangling above that damned stream. The dark waters of the Assa are foaming, frozen and roaring below us.

  “Noo!”

  My scream echoes, bounces on the steep, stony walls of the gorge, a hellish noise full of anger and frustration multiplied by the teasing echo.

  The clear waterfall hammers its roaring song down the cliff behind me.

  To hold on is like fighting a war. I know that he, the Nazi, won’t give up, not even if I had something to kill him with. After all, what would I do if I was in his shoes?

  I don’t want to even think about it, but even though I let my mind float, hoping for a solution, I can’t think of anything. Nothing at all.

  I hate having to do it.

  But I'm out of breath.

  My arms are screaming in pain.

  I can’t hold on any longer.

  The black water below me is gurgling while behind me the white waterfall digs a quiet roar in the watery perimeter.

  I hope it’s deep enough.

  The effort is enormous. I bring my legs closer to the rock while the Jerry swears and tries to eat my ankle. I push against the stone.

  I let myself fall.

  The freezing air slices my face. The Kraut lets go. I see him shatter against a huge stone. A bright red cloud. The cobalt blue that is the stream is getting closer. I can nearly touch its white, gurgling foam.

  Splash!

  The hit is terrible. The water sucks me towards the bottom. I allow it to, until the push wears off. Then, shaken and shocked, I get back up. More inertia than willpower.

  I’d like to leave everything behind and go die somewhere far away. No, fuck, I need to get to the meeting point.

  I've been selected.

  An important mission they told me. No, the word was vital.

  Still underwater, I smile as I wonder how I'll get there. It's a crazy smile, demented, desperate.

  The liquid freeze bites my arms as if two rows of monstrous teeth were being sharpened on me. I need to make sure I don’t die of exposure. And I don’t have much time.

  I force myself to keep moving my legs, wrapped in my Army trousers. Thankfully, here the stream doesn’t flow too fast. So, little by little, pitching like a tired ship, I manage to get to the opposite side.

  As soon as I see a branch I can reach, I grab it and hold on to it with all the strength I have left. It feels like it takes forever, but with an effort that feels superhuman, I manage to climb onto the shore. It's covered in snow. Snow. Fuck. More snow and ice.

  This winter will never end.

  It’s April, but it looks like the world hasn’t realized it.

  “Stop moaning,” I tell myself with what is left of my breath. “Think of Arnautovo, Nikolajevka, Schebekino.”

  “Davai, fucking davai.” Carry on, little soldier.

  My teeth chatter, but I can’t stop them. The only positive is that the meeting point isn't too far. There, the men from the Sette Comuni Brigade are waiting. The orders came straight from Nettuno, the Commander of the Monte Ortigara Division no less.

  I just can’t die now, like an asshole.

  Fucking davai.

  I feel like laughing. Again.

  So I laugh.

  Shit, maybe laughing will warm me up.

  I need to hope I’ll get there before I completely freeze.

  I start walking, like an ice monster.

  Each step is a lash of pain. Every meter is a nail in my flesh.

  But I don’t have a choice. Step by step. Between the ghosts of the trees and the cold that's getting harder, crueller.

  My breath freezes on my beard and on my moustache.

  Until…

  Until my wish to just lie down and sleep becomes a wonderful dream, a privilege.

  I bite my lip until it bleeds, just to stay awake.

  I want to sleep.

  Sleep.

  I don’t even have a gun.

  Sleep.

  So I can shoot myself.

  Sleep.

  Maybe just a shoulder.

  Sleep.

  To get the adrenalin running.

  Sleep.

  And then, when I really can’t go on any more…

  I fall to the ground.

  And I want to sleep, finally, on a white sheet of snow.

  * * *

  “Gerico!”

  The voice comes from far away.

  It takes me a while to realize where I am. Actually, to be fair, it takes me a while to realize I'm still alive.

  Then I feel the covers, I realize someone put me on a comfortable bed, a real bed, with a mattress, with sheets. A pair of Army trousers and a jacket are well folded on a wooden chair.

  Under the chair, a pair of shiny brown leather boots. Red flames dance in the fireplace in front of me. The smell of burning wood, the azure smoke. I feel born again.

  “Seeing you know, it seems strange that they picked you. Anyway, the Lord moves in mysterious ways.”

  I turn my head following that voice.

  “You were lying in the snow, freezing to death. What were you planning to do? Die? You, with that name? What in the world happened to you, Lieutenant?”

  Right, let’s take a step back. My name is Marco Caregnato, but everyone calls me Gerico. I was an Alpini Lieutenant in the Tridentina Division and I'm the only partisan who survived the latest area search the Nazis performed on the Plateau.

  They exterminated them all, to the last man, like the people of Jericho were exterminated.

  But the questions are still there. A stream of questions, and the man asking them is Commander Pietro Gheller of the Sette Comuni Brigade. Now I see him well, his blue, watery eyes and his sharp edged face, made even thinner by the rigour, the hunger, the military discipline he uses to keep the toughest Brigade on the Plateau organized.

  “An ambush. Two Nazis,” I whisper. My voice sounds dirty, rusty.

  “Really?” The Captain lifts an eyebrow.

  “They jumped me from behind in the woods near Roana, where the Assa waterfalls are. I fell in the river after having killed them.”

  “God almighty.” Captain Gheller pauses. “And then you got here? That’s why you were in that state.”

  While Gheller speaks I reach the decision not to waste any more time. So I sit on the bed, then I stand up and get dressed. I put the boots on. The feeling of wearing those boots is great.

  Real leather, not leather chips pressed and glued together, fucking Cuoital that lets your feet freeze. Classy stuff.

  “If you feel like standing up, Lieutenant, I won’t stop you. You wasted too much time on that bed.”

  “I never asked you to stop me,” I reply.

  “Gerico, do you know why I called you here?”

  “I suppose it has something to do with what I was told, some mission of vital importance.”

  “Exactly.”

  “What is it, Sir?”

  “I have no idea.”

  I look straight into his e
yes. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Does it look like I'm in the mood for kidding?” The Captain’s lips curl in something that could be a grin. “All I know is that tomorrow you're going to Bern.”

  “Bern?”

  “Yes, Bern, in Switzerland. Don’t ask. Orders from high up, apparently. Someone thinks you have what it takes for some kind of special mission. I suppose that the fact you speak perfect German and your past experience have something to do with this.

  So, it must make some sense somehow. Of course you won’t be in the best possible condition after what just happened, but that’s what we got.”

  I shake my head.

  I don’t get it.

  The more I think about it, the less clear the whole story is. Why on earth would they want to take me from here to get me to the capital city of Switzerland?

  “Switzerland?” I ask, voicing my doubts. “A neutral country? What am I going to do there?”

  “That’s not the point, Lieutenant: it’s an order. Anyway, did you think that maybe they're taking you to Bern exactly because it is the capital city of a neutral country?”

  “Right,” I say.

  “Right,” echoes Gheller. “You're leaving at midnight.”

  “How will I cross the enemy lines?”

  “Don’t worry, everything is organized. Get ready!”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Then he points at a small table in a corner.

  “Now, eat something,” he says. “You need to recover.”

  Then he opens the door of the hut and leaves.

  I sit at the table.

  I take a spoon and some bread. In the tin, white beans and beef.

  God, it’s too much. I can’t believe it.

  I attack the food. Who knows when I’ll be able to eat again?

  Ishmael

  Somehow I feel safe here.

  Don’t know the place, don’t even know the fuckin’ country, but being underground surrounded by American officers who want to be treated on first name terms makes me feel fine.

  So I allow myself to fall asleep.

  * * *

  Somebody knocks on my door to wake me up. “Sergeant Major MacLachlan, Sir?” a voice says. Can’t place the accent. I go to open the door. I've never seen the uniform, either.