Death's Head

by Leo Kessler

  “Come? To see you.” He attempted a smile but failed miserably.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t mean that. I mean you Germans – why did you come here?”

  “Because,” he began confidently: then he saw the sudden look of contempt in her eyes. He shrugged. “I don’t know – because it was part of the plan.”

  “Part of the plan! What does that mean? Cancer is part of the plan, consumption is part of the plan – and we accept it, eh?”

  From outside there came the rattle of her mother preparing the coffee in the kitchen which smelled of raw chopped beef and onions like everything seemed to do in Belgium.

  Suddenly he saw Simone for what she was. She was not a white tormented body on the bed, her mouth open and gasping like a dying fish, the sweat streaming down between her tiny taut breasts; she was a pale, hard face, naked of any other emotion but hate. And with the abruptness of a vision he knew there were others – many others – all over Europe like her. “You hate me, don’t you?” he said tonelessly, as if he were asking about the weather.

  “Yes, I hate you. But not as Kuno von Dodenburg, a man with whom I’ve slept three times. But as a German, a man belonging to a race which has taken over my country by force.”

  He rose to his feet. Very formally he said: “Then I shall go.” She rose too. “I think it would be better.” He gave her his hard hand. “I won’t see you again,” he said.

  “No, I don’t suppose you will.” He could see her thin shoulders hunch as if she were having difficulty in finding the right words. Then she dropped them helplessly.

  “I’ll go to the door myself,” he said. “Please say goodbye to your mother for me.”

  The door closed behind him and she was left standing there in the middle of the darkening room.

  But not for long. There was an urgent tapping on the window. She swung round. It was Jean. He was soaked, in spite of the heavy raincoat he was wearing. Hurriedly she opened the catch and let him in. “Shit weather,” he exclaimed and shook himself. But the rain had not dampened his spirits. His pale consumptive’s face was filled with enthusiasm and his eyes blazed. He dug his hand in his pocket and pulled out a pistol. “Now what do you say to that?” he exclaimed. “Took it off some big pig of a German NCO only thirty minutes ago. It was like this, you see…”

  He launched into an excited account of his attack on the German, the words tumbling out in hectic, short-winded gasps. He did not notice the tears in the girl’s eyes.

  The Vulture was crimson with rage. “My God, Metzger, you the senior NCO in the Battalion and you go and let some fool of a Belgian hit you over the head and take your pistol! Don’t you realize that this is a court-martial offence, man!”

  The Butcher looked down at his CO miserably. Why the hell had he ever gone to the knocking shop in the first place? None of the fat-arsed whores there could get it up for him anyway! He had told the MO that he had been hit in the balls at the landing, but that had been a lie. Ever since that great wall of violent flame had threatened to collapse on him something seemed to have gone out of him. He had seemed empty between the legs; and nothing seemed to be able to get his ‘Peterman’ up again. And when the shitty-fat-arsed whore had failed to put any stiffener in it, she’d had the gall to laugh at him and call him her ‘poor little worm’! That to a man who in his prime had been keeping four women happy at one time, including a doctor’s wife – and everybody knew that it took some satisfying their itchy cracks. No one wonder he hadn’t heard the Belgie sneak up behind him and bang him over the back of the head.

  “Well, Metzger?” the CO persisted. “How did it damn well happen? Come on man, you must have some explanation.”

  “He was a pretty big fellow, sir,” Metzger lied. “I was just tying up my bandage which had come loose,” he indicated his hand which was still festering from the burn he had received on the top of the cliff, “when he sneaked up . . .”

  “Are you sure there was only one of them?” Geier asked in heavy sarcasm. “In the most of the reports I’ve had on this score from the chain dogs this month, two men are mentioned. Or perhaps there were three involved,” he added with a sneer. Metzger flushed. “I don’t know about that, sir,” he mumbled.

  Geier swung his leg over the cavalry saddle which he used as an office chair and stood up to face Metzger, who towered above him. “Listen Metzger, you did me a favour once and so I’m going to do the same for you.” About time, the Butcher thought miserably. If I hadn’t have kept my trap shut, you and your liking for pretty boys would have landed you in Dachau right smartish.

  “Thank you, sir. Good of you, sir,” he said automatically.

  “I’m not going to report the loss of your pistol. It so happens that I have a spare. You can count yourself lucky that I have. You can have it. But for Christ’s sake, don’t go wandering down the backstreets late at night again.” He adjusted his monocle more firmly. “What the devil were you doing there anyway? It was long after curfew.”

  Metzger hung his head like some great overgrown schoolboy found dipping his finger in the jampot. “It was that business on the cliff, sir. It affected my sex life.” He broke off suddenly.

  Geier looked at him curiously. “What do you mean – affected your sex life?” The CO was interested in spite of himself.

  “I can’t get my Peterman up, sir.”

  “Can’t get your Peterman up!” Geier echoed, just preventing himself from laughing at Metzger’s hangdog look in time.

  “Yes sir,” he said miserably. “And I daren’t go home on leave, sir, till I can. God knows what would happen if I did and my wife couldn’t have her bit.”

  “Sergeant Metzger.”

  The Butcher turned miserably as he stepped out of Geier’s office with the new pistol in his holster. Schulze was standing there, rigidly at attention like some shitty greenbeak. “What do you want?” he asked morosely.

  “I couldn’t help overhearing what you said at the door inside the CO’s office – trouble with getting your pecker up.”

  Metzger looked at him in silence for a moment. He was too downcast to ‘make a sow of the man’ for talking to a senior NCO like that and listening at keyholes. “So,” he grunted.

  “Forgive me for poking my nose into this, Sergeant Metzger,” Schulze said, trying to prevent himself from laughing out loud in the Butcher’s stupid face. “But I think I know someone who could help you to put a bit of lead in it.”

  Metzger shook his head and started pulling on his grey dress gloves. “Nobody can help me,” he said miserably. “I’ve tried every knocking shop in the place and got my head knocked in for my pains.” He adjusted his cap. “Nothing’s going to help me any more.”

  Schulze held up his big hand to prevent him leaving the outer office, then laid it on Metzger’s sleeve sympathetically. “Don’t take it so hard. There are ways.”

  Metzger stared at him, his stupid red face a mixture of belief and disbelief. “They’d need a couple of splints and a suction cup to get my Peterman up these days.”

  “Don’t you believe it, Sergeant-Major!” Schulze said. “I know one of them Belgie whores who can put a bone in an elephant’s trunk. She even got that fat bastard of the kitchen bull laid and everybody knows that he’s not been able to get it up ever since he accidentally slashed his finger off when we were alerted for the Belgian campaign and he had to give up visiting the five-fingered widow.”

  “Him!” Metzger said incredulously.

  “I’d gladly take you to her.”

  A new light of hope crept into the Butcher’s eyes. “You really mean that?”

  “Of course.”

  The Butcher licked his lips. “Schulze,” he stuttered, I won’t forget this, honest!”

  “You bet your life you won’t, you bastard,” Schulze told himself, but he didn’t tell Metzger that.

  The downstairs of the brothel was thick with blue smoke and the steam from damp grey uniforms. A three-man band with litre mugs of beer beneath their c
hairs was playing bal musette music with energetic clashes on the cymbals and plenty of hefty bangs at the big drum. At the zinc-covered bar the silk-clad madame with frizzy dyed hair and rouged cheeks was watching her ‘girls’ carefully, as they sat giggling on their German NCOs’ laps, their skirts thrown back to reveal the customary black underwear that their clients expected from them.

  Hesitantly Metzger followed Schulze through the big felt blackout curtain which covered the doorway.

  “It’s all right,” the Hamburger reassured him. “NCOs only in here. I wouldn’t take you into any trashy place. Once there was even a couple of officers in here when I was – SS officers.”

  “That’s all right then,” the Butcher said and followed him through the press towards the two whores Schulze had told him about.

  “Where is she?” Schulze asked trying to keep his face straight.

  “She’s upstairs – ready and waiting,” the black whore with the squint answered.

  “Come on then, what we waiting for?” Metzger said. He attempted a smile. “I’m going to be a glutton for punishment tonight.” He rubbed his big hands in anticipation.

  Schulze bit his lip; the stupid bastard had never said a truer word.

  Together they went up the stairs and crossed the landing to her room. Metzger put his hand on the door to open it, hardly able to restrain his eagerness.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” the blonde whore said. “I’d knock – she’s very fussy.”

  “Oh, I see.” Metzger knocked and a deep voice, which sounded as if its owner was on sixty cigarettes a day, boomed: “Come on – I’m ready for you.” Metzger turned to Schulze, his look of anticipation replaced by one of doubt. But the big Hamburger did not give him a chance to back out now. “In yer go, sir. It’ll be like dipping yer wick in warm cream, believe you me.”

  Slightly reassured, Metzger opened the door and went in, followed by the other three.

  The Pig was waiting for them in the middle of the dingy room, her head nearly touching the naked bulb. Schulze could not quite catch his gasp of surprise. She was enormous, half a head taller than he was himself. And he could see why she was called the Pig. Her face looked just like that of the sow his grandfather had kept out at his farm in Oststeinbek – save the sow had not possessed the well-developed jet-black moustache which adorned her face.

  Metzger’s mouth dropped open in awe as he looked up at her. His lips tried to form the words to express his amazement, but failed miserably. Mouth hanging open stupidly, his eyes ran down her enormous body: the upper half squeezed into a lace-fronted corset in black from which her tremendous breasts, like over-ripe melons, threatened to escape at any moment; the bottom, clad in gleaming black boots right up to her thighs. Suddenly they came to rest on the leather dog whip which hung down the side of her right boot. “What’s tha.. . that?” he quavered.

  The woman did not answer his question. “Is this him?” she asked the blonde whore in a gruff bass voice. “Is this the one for treatment?”

  “Treatment!” Metzger whispered to Schulze. “What’s she mean – treatment?” Schulze opened his mouth to reassure Butcher, but the Pig was quicker. “All right,” she snapped in a voice that would have done credit to an Imperial Army drill sergeant, “you can go now and leave him to me. I’ll take care of him.” And to emphasise her point, she slapped the whip against the side of her boot.

  Hurriedly Schulze and the two whores made for the door. Metzger tried to do the same but the Pig was quicker. Her heavy muscular arm shot out, to reveal a thick tuft of black hair in her armpit, and grabbed him by the tunic. “Hiergeblieben!”2 she commanded. “We don’t want to run out on the doctor when we’ve got this far, do we? We’ve got to learn how to take our medicine like a man.”

  With her booted foot she kicked the door closed. “Now then, let’s have those trousers off for a start.”

  As if in a daze, Sergeant Metzger began to unbutton his braces.

  Schulze and his two friends, watching the beating through the voyeur holes in the wall, had to stuff their handkerchieves in their mouths to prevent themselves screaming out loud with laughter. But they need not have worried that Metzger might hear. The Pig kept him far too busy polishing her boots, slashing his buttocks with her black whip and threatening him with even more dire punishment if he didn’t “concentrate and stop being such a naughty boy!”

  Finally, when her boots gleamed like mirrors and the Butcher’s sweat-lathered back and buttocks were covered in angry weals, she ordered him to stop. Throwing her whip on to the sagging brass bed in disgust, she looked at him disdainfully and said gruffly: “Well, one can see that pitiful thing you’ve got down there is in a really bad way. It’s not going to be easy at all.” With an impatient gesture, she stuffed one monstrous breast which had escaped from her corset back inside. “Of course you realize you’ll need more treatment.”

  Metzger mumbled incoherently.

  “All right,” she snapped, “you can get dressed now. Put the money on the bedside table and then cut along. But I’ll expect you back next week for more treatment.” She picked up a cheeroot and lit it, striking a match on the sole of her boot.

  Metzger flew into his clothes. Not even waiting to finish his dressing, he flung the money on the bed and bolted down the stairs, buttoning up his flies as he went, as if the devil himself were after him. Crashing the door behind him, he fled into the night.

  Schulze knew there would be no next time for ‘treatment’. But for a week he took a malicious pleasure in seeing the Butcher limp slowly and painfully on to the parade ground each morning – “like somebody had stuck a metre rod up the fat bastard’s arse” – as the young soldier whose testicles Metzger had twisted so cruelly remarked in the presence of his unknown benefactor.

  Notes

  1. Hitler’s own description of himself; often used satirically by German civilians during the war.

  2. Stay here.

  FIVE

  The big Mark IV waddled out of the sea. “Blow the insulation,” von Dodenburg said over the intercom. The gunner flicked on the headlight and there was a soft plop. Von Dodenburg waited a moment, then pushed open the turret. A wave of cold air flooded the tank’s interior, driving out the smell of burned Diesel. He breathed in gratefully, and swung round to check that the rest of the squadron was following him.

  To his left he could see Schwarz’s tank clear to the turret and Schulze’s twenty-foot snorkel tube had just broken the surface of the water. The last exercise of the year had gone off completely successfully. Now the whole Battalion had completed its ‘sea trials’. As the Vulture had commented the day before, “If Doenitz runs out of submarine crews, he knows where he can come looking for them.”1

  “All right,” he said to the driver, satisfied that the squadron was surfacing in good order, “take her up between those two big rocks and let’s get back on…”

  He broke off suddenly.

  To his right a light winked, disappeared momentarily, then came on again. On instinct he kicked the driver on the right shoulder and yelled over the mike: “Head for that light over that big rock at two o’clock. I think somebody’s watching us.”

  The driver crashed home a higher gear. The tank lumbered ashore in a shower of wet gravel. Churning up sand, it roared along the beach towards the unknown watcher.

  Suddenly the man realized that he had been spotted and von Dodenburg saw him break cover and start running through the sand towards the coastal road.

  “Step on it!” he yelled at the driver. “I want to find out what the bastard was doing here!” But the terrain was on the unknown civilian’s side. He dodged in between the dripping boulders and it was difficult for the big tank to follow him without risking throwing a track.

  “He’s a smart bastard,” the driver said to himself, sweating over his tiller bars, as he flung the tank from side to side to avoid the boulders.

  “He’ll get away if we don’t…” His thoughts were interrupted by the chatter o
f a high-speed machine gun from behind them. Red and white tracer zipped across the beach and the fleeing man flung up his arms. He staggered another couple of steps, then fell flat on his face.

  Schwarz’s tank braked to a halt next to von Dodenburg and Schwarz stared at him with blank, crazy eyes. “Have you gone off your shitty head?” von Dodenburg roared. “What the hell use is he to us dead?”

  “He would have escaped,” Schwarz said woodenly. “I had to kill him.”

  Von Dodenburg dismissed him with an angry wave of his hand. He knew no one would ever penetrate Schwarz’s skull; he lived in a world of his own. He turned his attention to the dead civilian again. “Find anything, Schulze?” he said to the big Hamburger, who was kneeling at his side. “His identity card makes him out to be a Jean Goudsmit, student, but he must have thought the sword mightier than the pen,” Schulze laughed.

  “What do you mean?”

  “This.” Schulze held up a pistol, its butt wet with the dead man’s blood. “Wehrmacht issue, sir.”

  Von Dodenburg took the Luger and looked at it curiously. It was the standard issue to senior NCOs and officers. “He’s obviously one of those terrorists the British are paying to annoy us,” he said.

  “And look at these, sir!” It was the youth whose balls had been twisted by Metzger at the unarmed combat session. “I found them behind the boulder. He must have dropped them.”

  The young soldier handed him a pair of binoculars. “This is what must have reflected in the sun,” von Dodenburg said to no one in particular. “Now why the devil was he watching us?”

  Schulze pointed to the arrow, clearly engraved on the binoculars’ side. “Tommy equipment, sir. The Tommies have that arrow on all their gear. I’ve seen it before.” He took them out of von Dodenburg’s hand. “And look at the date, sir.”

  “What about it?”

  “It’s August, 1940 – after we’d run the Tommies out of France.”

  But in the bustle of preparations for the second Christmas of the war, the incident on the beach was forgotten and the Gestapo men and their colleagues from the Abwehr’s IIIF2 who came to investigate it, disappeared on Christmas Eve without having made any new discoveries.