“All right for you to go over… but not us! … not us!”
Okay … what have we got to lose? … we cross the yard … I’ll be damned! an enormous coffeepot! and the bread! … mountains of brötchen … nothing like that loaf of ours! … ah, they’re willing to share! … and let us get warm! Hjahnar gives the servant girls orders … to bring out chairs for us … sit down! sit down! … Our opinion? … we don’t say no … kind of chilly, we say, for October … but better now with the coffee … but our opinion about the pastor? … that he should have stayed home instead of running in under the planes, he’d been asking for trouble, bees or no bees! the majority agreed that he had no business under the planes …
But how about Lili?
I hoped la Kretzer had gone up … it never failed … the second Le Vig and I were out of the way, she came in to gossip … with her tunics and her tears … would she bring something to eat too? rolls and petits fours? the bitch was a first-class cook! … insidious in everything she did, a turner of puff paste, semi-almond twists … I couldn’t help thinking of cyanide … just an idea … oh, the sinister witch! … of the whole crowd … farm and manor … perhaps the most unpredictable with her sons’ tunics … and her mauve, transparent, lukewarm soups! …
I’m carrying myself away! … my verve! … let’s get back … to that good hot breakfast … to Hjalmar and his unfortunate apiculturist pastor … for the moment we were doing all right … real coffee and all the bread we wanted … servant girls at our beck and call … and the kitchen …
“When’s the paddy wagon coming?”
“Not so soon, it’s coming from Berlin …”
My impression of Berlin, the whole place thundering, flaming, throwing sparks into the clouds, I can’t see that paddy wagon coming …
“Don’t go … keep your seats … your wife can come too … plenty to eat … that’s an order!”
Hjalmar’s got his nerve! he’s the host … he takes off the pastor’s handcuff to let him eat and drink, and puts the chain around his own ankle … that way nobody can run away … orders is orders! as long as he’s got us there, the pastor spreads the good word …
“God sees all!”
Perched on his stool, he asks for more coffee … he turns to us …
“Sie verstehen? … you understand?”
“Ja! … ja!”
And … in German … in French … whatever comes into his head …
“Men are nothing! … chains are nothing … God is thinking of us! … the day is breaking! … let us pray! …”
It wasn’t really breaking, too many clouds … Hjalmar the beadle wasn’t in the praying mood … he was whispering to the servant girl … he wanted a little “tonic” with his coffee … gin, I think … I only hoped la Kretzer had gone up to see Lili … for the gossip of course … but with, coffee, bread, and butter … those Kretzers had everything they wanted … But like it or not, we had to see the von Leidens!
I’ve been telling you about the pastor, but I haven’t mentioned his costume … he wasn’t wearing a coat but a long gray blouse … an enormous lid, gray too, with a veil tied under his chin … the apiculturist at work … he explains … he won’t let us go till he’s told us … his function as keeper of the hives, his pursuit of the swarms had led him to the planes … his bees were all in the fuselage … none of those planes had taken off for two years … the last plane, the last pilot had made a hole in the field … the plane was still there, the pilot too, way down deep … there were still twelve planes, grounded, peaceful and quiet … so naturally the swarms were attracted! … especially the insides of the wings …
“I’ll tell them in Berlin! … they don’t know, they never come! … the sky belongs to God! God created the bees! His will be done!”
“Sicher! Certainly!”
We agreed with him … so did Hjalmar Spikehat …
I was going to ask about honey …
Somebody coming oyer there … In boots … Kracht, our Sturmapotheke! … what’s he want? Hjalmar tells me … observing … he has to send in reports about us, about everything, to his Standartführer in Berlin … perfect! … here he is! … he’s crossed the yard in a hurry … he doesn’t ask the pastor any questions, he just motions to us: everybody up! assembly!
“Komm! Komm!”
We should follow him … where’s he going? … Hjalmar can’t move, he’s chained to the pastor … quick! quick! … the key! he gets up! … we take off his handcuff … there! … we straggle off … finally Kracht speaks up, we’re going to the airfield for the investigation … couldn’t he leave us here? … oh well! … here’s the path … first through alfalfa, then woods … still going … pretty far, I’d say … since Berlin it seems to me that everything is far … bad limp … I lag behind … ah, at last! … a big clearing … Hjalmar has brought his bugle and drum … on his back, jigglejoggling … he limps too, worse than me actually … he must have been wounded in the war too … we seem to be about the same age … his instruments make a terrible clatter … he’s got the pastor on the chain again, by (he handcuff … I can’t make out what Kracht wants, why he’s brought us … when I had things to do at the manor and the farm and the grocery store … why were we wasting our time here … whenever they get a chance, never fear, people make you waste hours and months … they use you as a wall to bounce their bullshit off of … blah! and blah! and blahblahblah! … you put up with it for an hour, you’ll need two weeks to recover … blah! blah! … hitch a thoroughbred to a plow, it’ll take him a month, two months, to get back in his stride … if he ever does … the same can happen to you for trying to be nice, for listening …
Kratz, though, wasn’t the talkative expansive type … he must have had some good reason for taking us out on that military airfield … especially Le Vig and me, a very special brand of Frenchmen … where we really had no business … I see something coming out of the ground … a cap … a head … out of a trench … and then the torso … a flier … a sergeant … yellow piping on his cap … heil! heil! … we all spring to attention! heil! heil! … he comes out of his hole … he’s only got one arm … if I’m not mistaken, he guards the camp and the planes … what planes? … where? … far away! … he points to the end of the clearing … through his binoculars I can see … he’s got binoculars … six planes on the ground … he’s the sergeant who arrested the pastor … in the fuselage … red-handed … going too far! … he’d already caught him three times … now he washed his hands! … handed him over to Hjalmar! … this sergeant, I gathered, was only in temporary command … the regular commander had gone to Berlin … or Potsdam for orders … the sergeant had tried to contact him … all the lines had been cut … not surprising with all the stuff they’d been dropping … but some kind of official news bulletin had reached Zornhof early in the morning … the “Wehrmacht Communiqué” plus two or three “special announcements” … “We are retreating on all fronts but very soon our secret weapon will destroy London, New York, and Moscow.”
Everybody … soldiers and housewives and prisoners … had stopped paying attention to these “special announcements” … the only thing that interested anybody was the paper … this rare paper was brought by cyclists … four of them had vanished without trace! …
That paddy wagon didn’t have much chance of getting there either … the pastor was resigned, so was Hjalmar … meanwhile up there in the clouds there were trails of fluff, all crisscrossing … amusing … long … very long … and then all of a sudden! cut! “abstract” so to speak … and boom! crater on crater! … We there on that airfield seventy miles away, we could feel the rain of torpedoes … definitely! … good thing I’d bought my canes … that store must be all powder by now … even then it was openwork … I got to wondering where they printed their bulletin … I ask Kracht …
“In a bunker thirty feet down, south of Potsdam …”
Really stubborn bastards! … but I’d still like to know: why had he brought us up th
ere? … if people invite you out for a walk they must have something in mind … like Harras in Felixruhe … what had we gone there for? I’m still wondering … anyway there we were, gazing at the sky, the extravaganza of fluff and clouds … All of a sudden he speaks to me:
“Doctor, would you mind … going over to the planes with me? you see them? at the end of the field … I want your opinion, for my report …”
“Certainly! … Certainly!”
But what for? … and suddenly so familiar? a stroll in the woods? … get me away from the others? … the field is covered with cinders … but very soft all the same … with his boots he sinks in even deeper than I do … more trouble walking …
Ah, here we are … six planes … we go up to one! he pulls back the tarp, I see the state it’s in … the holes in the wing! … both wings! … enormous holes! … rusty … and the fuselage, and the propellers! … scrap! I say as much to Kratz, there’s nobody around … he answers very frankly …
“Doctor, I’ll tell you something worse … much worse … no more pilots! … no more oil! … no more gas! … there’s the last pilot!”
He points to a hole a little farther on … a crevasse in the runway … with the tail of a plane sticking out…
“The pilot’s at the bottom of that hole … the last pilot … buried … the experts were supposed to come from Berlin, they never came … I had them pour in quicklime … what more could we do? the hole is full of quicklime … they pour some in once a week …”
But the swarms? … he shows me … inside every wing … I see three … four swarms … the pastor knew what he was doing … he’d left all his boxes and his butterfly net right where the sergeant had caught him … but the sergeant hadn’t been able to keep him … no room in his little shelter … no chain, no handcuffs … so he’d passed him on to Hjalmar to hold until the police van came … question of adjusting to very difficult conditions …
“Listen to me, Doctor . ; . I’ve brought you here to ask you a little favor …”
“Delighted, Kracht … delighted …”
Ah, at last!
“A delicate matter … yes, rather delicate … have you got any cigarettes?”
“No, Kracht, I haven’t … I don’t smoke … neither does my wife … but I’ve got the key to the big cupboard … you know that …”
No use his saying any more, he wants me to dig into the stock … I can’t say no … and I can’t give him an out-and-out yes … he’d taken me all this way to sound me out … When you’ve been around a while, you know the ways of agents provocateurs … all their dodges … it always starts with a little “heart-to-heart” talk … the appetizer … after the “heart-to-heart,” watch out! … then he comes to the point! I’d never have got back from that airfield if I’d said what I was thinking …
“Why, of course, my dear Kracht … Cravens? Luckies? Navys?” Boosting my merchandise …
“Make it Luckies … twenty cigarettes … that’s all! … no more!”
“Where?”
“Here … in my holster …”
He shows me …
“I’ll leave it in the entrance for you … I’ll hang it on the hatrack … when we come down … you know … for the mahlzeit …”
We have a good laugh over the mahlzeit!
“Don’t forget to close the holster!”
And he adds:
“Oh, you needn’t worry … Harras will never come back!”
Very encouraging … Harras not coming back … looked bad for us, it seemed to me … nothing to stop this guy … he’d con us into a dozen shady deals … all to the same effect … this dodge … slipping cigarettes into his holster … everybody’d see me … that was the whole idea … suppose they were all … the girls and the Kretzers … in cahoots! Kracht was laying it on thick, it seemed to me … fixing to have us shipped out … chained and handcuffed … in the same cage as Pastor Bieder … not just me, Le Vig, Lili, and the cat … I guess we cramped their style at the manor … sure they were in this together … some racket … what? … no telling … geese?… honey? … anyway some gimmick … and we bugged them … in certain situations people stop at nothing, you’ll see next time … when all the cities are in flames, they’ll have only one idea … for you to burn with them!
“Very well, Kracht … perfect … your holster on the hatrack …”
The main thing was to get moving in the other direction … back to Le Vig … this little stroll had been going on long enough, we’d seen the planes, the bees, the pastor’s boxes … We’d arranged about the cigarettes …
I take another look at the field … about twice as big as the Place de la Concorde … you could see far away into the distance over the pine trees … the steeple, the clock … The Fortresses keep passing over … they certainly know all about this airfield and the shelter … they know the last pilot is down at the bottom of that hole in the quicklime … been there for three months … and that nobody’s come to investigate … that’s why they leave us alone … Hjalmar’s the only one who takes it seriously … or pretends to … he keeps bugling the alarm … same path, mud and cinders … back again … Le Vig … whew! … he’s been wondering what Kracht wanted of me …
“Oh, nothing … a bit of information … you know, about my application …”
“What application?”
“My license to practice …” .
“Oh yes … oh yes!”
I wasn’t going to tell him about the cupboard … he’d find out … I’d tell him later … but what now? … the sergeant is attached to the farm for rations, that’s where he fills his messkit … so was the lieutenant before he cleared out … the von Leidens’ Russian cooks make the slobgullion … for all those people … civilians and soldiers … we string out again, the one-armed sergeant with Kracht, the sergeant limps too … at least as much as me … he ought to have a cane … I couldn’t give him the address of the store where I bought mine … must be up in the clouds by now … I wouldn’t ask for the address of the Steinbock Hotel either … it seems, the hunchback told me so, the Chancellery has been squashed, Adolf must have been out of town …
We straggle back … Kracht, the one-armed sergeant … then, maybe six feet behind, Hjalmar, limping badly … still with his drum and bugle and his pastor on the chain … he puts back the chain … takes it off … puts it on again … Hjalmar Spikehat limps worse than any of us! … the pastor gives him his arm, helps him along … Here we are! … Hjalmar’s all hopped up … he wants the women to hurry … he looks at the sky … he’d been gone a long time … what’s going on? a special alert? … the telephone? … I ask him …
“Nein! ach! … nein! Kaput! … Kaput! telefon!”
The telefon hasn’t worked in a long time! … guess he does it by instinct … bugles when the spirit moves him! anyway he can see the lousy planes for himself … coming and going … and the horizon … that tall frantic army of flames! yellow and green … I show him …
“Achtung! Hjalmar! … watch out! rat-tat-tat!”
For laughs! … but he doesn’t laugh, he takes his work to heart … he’s going to split a gut! … disasters are like love, very serious at first, inspiring, then after a while hopelessly grotesque … Hjalmar’s inner clock was off kilter, he was still in ‘14 … his Berlin was a porridge of ruins … after this Moscow, Hiroshima, New York won’t horrify anybody or even be taken very seriously … the world of the sixties is too jerksome, nicotinized, alcoholic, airborne, and blabblative not to find it perfectly natural if it goes out of existence … Pastor Rieder now, who had good reason to be worried, set us an example of perfect calm … he was even singing snatches of hymns … I didn’t understand them all, but pretty near … one song I’ve often heard in England and Denmark … “Wisdom Is My Strength” … bad fix, though … hunting bees on a military airfield could mean plenty of trouble … and crimp his desire to sing for evermore … the Luftwaffe’s court-martials had never been warmhearted … but now with th
e total debacle, with the BAF doing as it pleased, pulverizing a city a day, they saw spies everywhere … Suspects … pastors or not … were shot by the carload … this pastor, it seemed to me, wouldn’t be singing when they got through with him …
We’re coming to the other door … their kitchen is wide open … the three servant girls come out they’re barefoot, with their hair down … strapping women, not skinny, oh no, they haven’t been fasting … their aprons are tied Russian style over their bosoms … not very winning, but practical … but they laugh at us … our chained pastor holding up the beadle and the one-armed noncom and Kracht … and especially Le Vig, the look on his face, like he’d fallen from the moon … why do they think we’re so funny? … Kracht asks them, he speaks a bit of Russian … they don’t know … Berlin burning, nothing to them, the Fortresses coming and going, they don’t even look … but us there, Hjalmar and his pastor on the chain, we’re worth looking at … all right, all right, they should bring out the chow! the noncom knows his rights, this is his filling station, they should step on it! … they bring out a kettle of soup … beautiful soup! richer, fattier than the bibelforschers’ … the noncom orders three messkits for us, they plunge them right into the kettle … he orders them to bring three chairs … not stools! … there’s five of us … what a feed! … it’s kind of chilly, the soup hits the spot … and the bread and coffee … I think of Lili … I’d meant to bring her something … but maybe Marie-Thérèse or the perfidious Frau Kretzer … I’m not so sure! I wouldn’t expect anything of these women, except some more monkeyshines … our heiress with her grand piano … and the bitch with the two tunics … I look at the church clock … the coffee, bread, and soup have had quite an effect on the pastor … his face has changed, and his tone … no more hymns, now he’s singing lieder … they all come out of the kitchen, three by three, there are six of them … and applaud … they want more!
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