Wanting consolation, the ASC men pushed into the light and listened eagerly. They knew this little man who was rumoured to have died and come back to life. They’d also heard that the lieutenant’s name was Kroysing. In many of their dull minds Süßmann was therefore accorded some of the trust they’d had in Sergeant Kroysing, who had also been quite short and brown-haired. As a result, his encouragement worked. All those patient men really wanted was reassurance, something to soothe their souls and help them come to terms with the situation. Süßmann stood in the midst of his three enemies and glanced fleetingly at their faces. Behind those faces, they were shaking. Oh, he felt exactly how much. Should he ask for the post book now? No, too potent a moment. They could have refused him with good reason. First they needed a chance to have other thoughts. After lunch then. He clicked his heels together, swung round at attention and vanished with Bertin into the endless, dark tunnel. The electric cable had been cut somewhere.
CHAPTER FIVE
Between neighbours
LATE IN THE afternoon, Captain Niggl asked Sergeant Major Feicht to come to his room. It was dark inside; the electricians were still working on the lighting cable. The captain cast a formless shadow on the wall in the dim light from the stearin candle on the table. He was sitting on his bedstead and had been asleep. He planned to spend some time in the open with the entrenching commando that night, but for now he was wearing breeches and grey woollen stockings that his wife had knitted and slippers – black slippers from Weilheim, each with a white Edelweiß embroidered on it. The sergeant major stood to attention in the doorway. In a tired voice, the captain asked him to close the door, come in and sit down on the stool. Sergeant Major Feicht obeyed, giving his superior officer a look of deepest sympathy. He too felt dreadful.
Feicht and Niggl came from the same area. Before the war, Ludwig Feicht, who was a native of Tutzing and married to a local woman, had worked contentedly as a purser on the handsome steamers that plied Lake Starnberg, or Lake Würm as it was also called. When the visitors from north Germany were standing in groups on the deck admiring the beautiful old coppices of trees, the clear water, the silver gulls circling above, Purser Feicht stepped forward in his blue reefer jacket with gold braid and his marvellous peaked cap and explained to the summer holiday-makers in broad but not impenetrable Bavarian that this was the up-and-coming spa resort of Tutzing and that was Bernried, with its little church that was much older than even the most impressive churches in Berlin. He was flattered when the clueless Berliners and Saxons addressed him as ‘Captain’ and asked indescribably stupid questions: was Rose Island over there by Tutzing artificial and had King Ludwig by any chance had a castle on it?
Ludwig Feicht loved his summer life on the long lake, and his broad, red face radiated goodwill. He had two small children in Tutzing, and while he was away his wife Theresa single-handedly ran a grocery shop and delicatessen for the many spa guests who packed the place out. Even now – especially now – the starving Prussians descended on the place to fill their bellies with Bavarian milk, dumplings and smoked meats, leaving their money behind, the new brown or blue 20 Mark notes. And Ludwig Feicht had been very happy with his life. He’d even faced the transfer to Douaumont with a certain composure, believing himself immune to the vicissitudes of fate. But as of that day, as of the two instances of shellfire, that feeling had been abruptly overturned. That the French had fired those two shells at the fort, that they were so bloody expert that they only needed those two: this took his breath away when the gunners from turret B explained it to him. His goal had been to return home in one piece with some tidy savings. Now he wasn’t sure what to think.
‘Feicht,’ the captain said in his new, depressed voice, employing the thick Bavarian dialect of their lakeside homeland, ‘answer me one question – not in your official, military capacity, but as a neighbour who’s in, you know, the same tight spot as me, as a Tutzinger to a Weilheimer, who has a dispute with someone from Nuremberg. Imagine the two of us are in a shooting hut above the Benediktenwand ridge and a nasty Nuremberger is due to turn up early in the morning wanting something from us – a Franconian, a right bastard.’
Feicht sat there squarely on the stool, bent forward, elbows on his knees. This was it. This was why he’d been brought to this evil vaulted place. He’d always made fun of clergymen and churches and pilfered from the steamship company without a second thought. Money was his second favourite thing in the world. But he should have kept his hands off dead men’s belongings. There was something wrong with that. ‘Captain,’ he said hoarsely, ‘I know what this is about.’
Niggl nodded. An intelligent man such as his neighbour would of course understand the ways of the world. Who would have thought that meek little mouse Sergeant Kroysing would have the devil incarnate for a brother. The brother had claws and he dug them in. He pursued his goal with tenacity, and his goal was to destroy.
Yes, exclaimed Feicht, waving his right hand about, which, being a sergeant major who understood what was proper, he’d never have done in a different mood or under other circumstances. Lieutenant Kroysing struck him as a crab that might skewer a pencil someone had put between its claws as a joke. There was only one solution: wave goodbye to the pencil or chuck the crab in boiling water.
‘You see, Feicht, that’s just it. We can’t chuck the crab in boiling water, but perhaps the lanky bastard will fall in by himself when he’s floating about with his mine throwers at the front line. Perhaps we could help him, shine a torch on him when he has us all up at the front and we’re under cover and he’s on the top. Until then, we’ll have to give him the pencil. Have you got the list?’ Feicht said that he had. ‘Do you know where the various things are?’ Without so much as a blush, Feicht considered for a moment, then said, yes, he knew where the things were.
‘What writings there were are still among my paperwork,’ said Niggl. ‘I’ll pull them together for you and leave them packed up here on my bed. Package everything up nicely while we’re gone – everything, old chum! Work out his pay up until the day of his death, not a Pfennig short. Can we produce the paper that the company commander signed when the belongings arrived?’ Feicht nodded. ‘By tonight the package is to be on the table in Lieutenant Kroysing’s room. I’ll answer any questions he may have. We mustn’t leave him any openings, Feicht,’ he said, eyeing his portly subordinate pensively. ‘For the time being, we have the weaker hand. For the time being. Now, be off with you, old chum. Tell Dimpflinger to get me a decent bit of meat, even if it’s from a tin. I want to see this game through. We’ll see who laughs last.’
Feicht looked with deepest sympathy at the gentleman perched on the bedstead in his slippers and blue knitted waistcoat with deer antler buttons. Here was a proper compatriot who wouldn’t turn his men over to that insane, scrawny Nuremberger, that rag and bone merchant. ‘It’ll be all right, old boy, even if it is a bit of a headache,’ said Feicht. ‘Whoever puts his trust in this retired civil servant from Weilheim will always have family. And when we’re all happily back home, Feicht will know whom to thank.’
‘Off you go, Feicht.’
The sergeant major walked to the door, turned the key and clicked his heels together, every bit the soldier. They’d understood each other without speaking plainly.
When there were spoils to share out, the sergeant major kept the lion’s share and gave something to the clerk who was working on the case, as well as the postal orderly and one or two of the NCOs to whom he was well disposed. It was very painful to have to cough up gifts already received, but a wise man does not questions orders from on high and he would no doubt get his reward in due course.
All alone in the small, square room that had been assigned to him and Simmerding the company commander as a billet and office, Ludwig Emmeran Feicht busied himself with the objects that the now almost forgotten sergeant had left behind in July. The company’s list lay on the table, and the cheerful electric light was working again. The door was closed, and a tumbler
ful of red wine and a filled pipe sweetened the unpleasant task. A coup had failed – never mind, they hadn’t meant any harm. Now in slippers himself, the portly man moved about putting everything in order, then sat astride the stool to take stock. Every time he found something he made a cross on the list with a freshly sharpened pencil.
First a leather waistcoat, worn but still usable, and (secondly) this fountain pen with the gold lever: they had formed the clerk Dillinger’s share. He’d been wide-eyed when he handed them back but he’d understood. Funny how the whole company had grasped that something to do with dead Sergeant Kroysing was in the air when that lanky fencepost of a brother appeared. Oh, they’d gloated a bit at the beginning, the little ASC men. But not any more. They visited their comrades in the sickbay and thought bitterly about how they had Lieutenant Kroysing to thank. Perhaps one or two workers from Munich thought about it more deeply and held the orderly room responsible for the disaster. But that way of thinking had no momentum, because the French shells had so much more momentum; he who dies, dies. Nowt for it. And so the Frogs helped keep discipline, and one army supported the other.
Pipe, tobacco pouch and pocket knife; Sergeant Pangerl had obediently brought them back. The knife had a deer antler handle and was stuck in its sheath like a dirk. The lad Kroysing had hardly used the pipe, which was of the best Nuremberg workmanship, and had kept it in a leather pouch. Now it would atrophy in a drawer – what a shame. Sergeant Major Feicht looked tenderly on the broad ebonite mouthpiece, the gleaming briar wood bowl and the wide tobacco chamber fitted with an aluminium tube. He put the parts back together again, wrapped the pipe in its pouch and crossed it off the list. A wallet full of slips of paper, a notebook, a leather-bound booklet with the calendar for 1915, a narrow moleskin notebook with writing – with poems! The kinds of verses that rhymed at the end. Ludwig Feicht’s lips curled in contempt. Typical. People who wrote verses should steer clear of other activities. If things went wrong for them, they only had themselves to blame. But now the most important items: the purse, watch and ring. Shame about the ring. He’d intended to give it to his wife Theresa as a souvenir, a holiday surprise. It was set with a beautiful green stone, an emerald, and the ring itself was in the shape of snake biting its tail and was patterned with scales. He, Feicht, had wanted to wear the watch, either on his wrist or strung on a long, thin gold chain across his waistcoat. It had all gone sour.
He hadn’t done too badly in this unit, but it was nothing compared to the infantry and cavalry, who’d marched into wealthy Belgium at the beginning of the war, into Luxembourg and northern France. They had seen some loot and no mistake. The clocks of Liège, the gold of Namur, and even the small provincial towns. Of course those dirty north German rogues hadn’t let the Bavarians at it. It was the Rhinelanders and Saxons who got stuck in, by Jove it was. Had it not always been considered right and proper that soldiers who were risking their life for the Fatherland should pocket something? Did the bigwigs behave any differently when they swallowed up whole provinces – Belgium, Poland, Serbia and the beautiful stretch of countryside here that they called the Briey-Longwy iron ore basin. If you didn’t get rich at war, you’d never get rich. And what a waste it would’ve been to melt down the beautiful watches, chains, bangles, necklaces, rings and brooches when the small towns were razed to the ground because they were full of god-damned franctireurs resistance fighters. Where had he met that clever man with the travelling military field library, which had a false bottom with drawers you could pull out – nothing but Belgian watches in them? Had it been in Alsace? Yes, that man had known what was what. But the war wasn’t over yet. A lot could still happen. All of France might be up for grabs if the Germans won. And they would win and must win – or all was lost. Feicht wasn’t the only one who knew that. So he could restore this Swiss watch with its beautifully engraved gold back cover to the lucky heirs with confidence. It kept good time, he could vouch for that. The money – he counted the folded notes. Seventy-six Marks and eighty Pfennigs – ah well! He could’ve got the children new clothes with it, pleated taffeta skirts, green silk pinafores and tops. But it didn’t matter. Theresa was doing very nicely out of the starving north Germans. He’d get over it. He’d kept it safe, and there you were – he’d been right. The last item on the list was underwear. Ludwig Feicht dipped a pen in ink and wrote an asterisked note on the list, placing it so that the company commander’s signature hovered protectively below it: ‘Distributed to comrades in need, as the deceased would have wished.’ Full stop.
The pile of goods lay on the grey-painted table carefully wrapped in the leather waistcoat. Dependable Feicht now took from a box a large piece of orange-coloured oil paper reinforced with woven-in threads and wrapped the whole lot up so that the affixed address label adorned the middle. He tied it with string, took sealing wax and the company seal and sealed Sergeant Kroysing’s effects with two big red stamps. He left the address intact. It was addressed to the Third Company orderly room, and the sender was given as the Fifth Echelon Army Postal Depot. A whole stack of letters had arrived from there after the battalion had been on the move for a week, battering over from Poland to Verdun. That now proved rather handy. Ludwig Feicht filled out a small yellow slip of paper in narrow, spiky handwriting: ‘Return to sender. Address incomplete. No duplicate enclosed.’ He checked the postmark – delightfully illegible.
He would suggest to the captain that he enclose a judiciously worded covering letter, saying that the package had been correctly addressed to Councillor Kroysing, but that due to an oversight on the part of the clerk Dillinger the army postal address of the company had been given instead of the Kroysings’ address in Nuremberg: Ebensee, Schilfstraße 28. What a silly mix-up! Dillinger had been severely reprimanded and would have spent three days in prison, but they had decided to put mercy before justice as his wife had just had a baby and his thoughts were back home. If the company hadn’t been suddenly ‘transferred’, the package would have been in Nuremberg long ago. That’s how it was, Lieutenant. Did the lieutenant have any further questions? Ludwig Feicht the purser grinned quietly to himself, dipped a small brush in the glue jar, stuck the return slip on the right-hand corner of the address label and rubbed it a bit with the sole of his slipper to make it look as though it had gone through the post. He then stamped it with the company stamp in such a way that only two of the curved lines and an asterisk were visible; ink doesn’t take very well on oil paper and he’d been careful not to press the stamp in the ink pad. With his hands behind his back, he contemplated his handiwork. Excellent job. The captain would be pleased.
As the men marched out that night in the deepest gloaming, Herr Simmerding and Herr Niggl met at the back of the column. Although Captain Niggl was a half bottle of Bordeaux to the good, he found the reek of alcohol off his company commander discomfiting. It wasn’t that he disapproved of Dutch courage. He drank himself and so did everyone in the army. They tramped along beside each other in virtual silence. Eventually, Niggl began to feel sorry for the other man with his hunched shoulders and pinched neck. They too were close compatriots. The Simmerding family lived all along the north shore of the lake. And so, in an undertone, he asked how he was doing after the shock earlier at midday. Fine, grunted Simmerding. Niggl said that was good, because he had every reason to feel fine. Sergeant Major Feicht had now sorted out the unpleasantness to do with young Kroysing’s effects.
‘Really,’ said Simmerding, with a wild, fleeting glance at the man on his right. ‘Sorted it out, has he? Ha, ha! Has Feicht brought young Kroysing back to life then? Got him out of his coffin, blown new air into him and put him back in the ranks? Because that man in there will be satisfied with nothing less.’
‘Simmerding,’ said Niggl soothingly, not allowing Feicht’s anxious tone get to him, ‘pull yourself together. All is by no means lost.’
Simmdering came to a halt. His clenched fists stuck out from the wide arms of his coat. ‘All is not lost! All has long since been lost! I�
�m sick of this whole business with Christoph Kroysing, if you really want to know! Sick to here—’ he raised his hand to his mouth. ‘I could kick myself for having got caught up in sending him to Chambrettes and that game with the files – your game.’
‘No one forced you, Acting Lieutenant Simmerding,’ said Niggl coolly. ‘Make sure you don’t fall too far behind your company. And say a couple of Ave Marias during the night.’
What a lily-livered specimen, he thought contemptuously.
Passed down from the front, the same warning resounded over and over again: ‘Watch out, wire below. Watch out, wire above.’
CHAPTER SIX
Snatched booty
WHEN LIEUTENANT KROYSING came home that night and turned on the light, his whistling abruptly stopped. He was always happy to get back to the welcoming vaults of the fort – welcoming vaults! He laughed to himself at the expression. He appreciated its irony, which came from the extent to which the world was distorted. The hours spent on the winding uphill route from the infantry positions, the rude presence of mind, born of repeated experience, needed to evade the French shells – it all meant he felt positively happy as soon as he heard his steps echoing off the stone walls. That’s why Lieutenant Kroysing was whistling. He broke off in the middle of the most beautiful part of the Meistersinger overture. Kroysing looked in astonishment at the surprising postal gift on his table and the folded note between the oil paper and the string. Uh-huh, he thought scornfully, who goes there?
Outside Verdun Page 15
