Outside Verdun

by Zweig, Arnold; Rintoul, Fiona;

  Just then someone knocked at the door. ‘Are you coming?’ asked Karl Lebehde.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Spring is sprung

  A FEW MORNINGS later, full of longing, Sister Kläre opened the tar paper-covered shutters of her little cell; the next day was 21 March, the first day of spring. In her cosy, candy-striped flannel pyjamas, she stretched out her arms, folded her hands behind her thick ash blonde plaits and leant out to look at the great silvery star set in the green dawn to the east: Venus. She could see right across the countryside to the golden streaks above the horizon and the misty river valley, and on the left to the woods of Consenvoye. She noticed that the beech trees were already covered in green shoots and didn’t hear a couple of metallic strikes that drifted across from behind the hills. If only this year would fulfil its promise. It’s Tuesday today, she thought. Father Lochner will be coming about his carbuncle for the last time. If I want to speak to him it’ll have to be today. The week before he’d said that Kroysing was an extraordinary man, and that he had presented him with the news of his friend Süßmann’s sudden death in that unvarnished way in order to give him a shock, make him understand humanity’s limits and force him to reflect. But unfortunately it hadn’t done much good, and that steely soul would have to experience much worse before it learnt humility in the face of the unfathomable and opened up to the sorrows and splendour of natural life. Yes, Kroysing was quite someone, but so was Father Lochner. He was well schooled in the contemplative as well as the active life, and it was a pleasure to listen to his feisty debates with those atheist savages, Kroysing and Pahl. Father Lochner found Pahl almost more compelling than Kroysing, but Sister Kläre wasn’t with him on that one; she found Kroysing much more compelling than Pahl, than Mettner, than the medical officer – although he did put forward spectacularly gloomy views about life on earth – than Bertin, dear God, whom circumstances had reduced to a sheep, than Father Lochner himself. So far there had been no declaration or even a hint of one between herself and Kroysing, the enemy of God; the odd embarrassed glance had done the talking. Was it possible to marry a man like that? She was reserving judgement on that point until she’d heard the priest’s view. But how to get out of her current marriage, that cross she had to bear, or at least have it annulled on account of her husband’s condition? Conscientious Peter Schwersenz was in the grip of a disastrous depression, unable to cope with experiences he bore and answered for in silence. He sat there in Hinterstein valley, like a hermit in his cell, poring over maps, files and cuttings from French, British and Swiss newspapers, like a man eternally damned to fight the Battle of the Marne over and over again, to replay what ought to have happened and what, through his actions though not his fault, had in fact happened.

  Well, she understood nothing of that, or very little. She had always been glad of her husband’s intellectual superiority. But she, Kläre Schwersenz, had given birth to two children, had aborted another one and prevented the conception of countless others, but she had never felt as fulfilled as a woman as she did now. The last decade of her womanhood had begun. She didn’t want an intellectual man, a kind, pleasant man who was unsure of himself; she wanted a real man, a man who bristled with energy and crackled with fire – who was dangerous, facetious and opinionated and who if necessary was prepared to spit in the face of death. She knew too much of life to claim that she couldn’t live without Kroysing, but she knew that with him she would be twice the woman she was now. And for him, as an engineer, an alliance with a daughter of the Pidderit family would open doors he didn’t even know where there. The workers at the Pidderit plant would naturally respond quite differently to the man who wouldn’t surrender at Douaumont than they did to her brothers and the directors, and they would be ready to obey him. After the enormous sacrifices of this war, the workers would quite justifiably make demands on the state that would be hard to resist. Only those who understood them and appealed to them as soldiers would be able to deal with them. Her father, Blasius Pidderit, a great old man who loved her as much as he was capable of loving another human being, after visiting the Great Headquarters of the crown prince (with whom she was still on close terms at that time), had spoken contemptuously of the idiots who were mad enough to try to curry favour with the Junkers by blocking the workers’ most basic demand: equal, secret and direct suffrage in Prussia. The old man and Eberhard Kroysing – they would get on. She could see Kroysing in the bosom of her family, a tall man with a deep, resonant voice that captured people’s attention. Then shaking her head at herself, half laughing, half disapproving, she pulled her small window shut and went over to the washstand, wishing for the first time that her mirror weren’t so tiny, and got ready to face her day’s work.

  For Eberhard Kroysing having his bandages changed was no longer horrific. He began each day with breakfast, which he enjoyed less each morning, but that couldn’t be helped. In his mind, he replaced the weak coffee, meanly spread slices of bread, and porridge or rye flour soup with the dishes he would have when the the war was won and he had an adequate wage that allowed him to breakfast properly. It remained to be seen if Sister Kläre, were she to become his wife, would know how to reconcile the modest income of an engineer with his lavish requirements. Either way, breakfast at the Kroysings must and would comprise an apple, a Calville apple, crisp, yellow and fragrant; it would also comprise two eggs in a glass, fresh butter, toasted bread or white rolls, and coffee – coffee such as the Austrians were supposed to make, although compared with the breakfast coffee of Eberhard Kroysing’s dreams they didn’t even know what coffee was: small beans, round and silken as pearls, freshly roasted, which, after they’d been ground, would have no contact with metal; hot water would slowly be poured over them and they’d percolate for three minutes, after which a drink would be poured into the master of the house’s cup whose aroma would pervade the entire apartment and the master would enjoy it with a spoonful of thick cream and some good-quality sugar. Resplendent upon the fluffy white rolls would lie either properly salted steak tartare mixed with chopped onion and goose fat and very lightly peppered, or that ivory coloured cheese you got in Switzerland and the Allgäu, that dark yellow cheese from Holland, that reddish cheese from England, a flat Brie or a runny Camembert.

  If you had to lie in bed as he did, though admittedly he was no longer a cripple, but an airman and an eagle, you could happily spend half an hour dreaming about cheese – and in wartime the whole world dreamt with you. People must have learnt how to use milk properly very early on – the people of the steppes would have known, horsemen with their mare’s milk, and the herdsmen races with their cow’s and goat’s milk, their sheep’s and ass’s milk. It was funny to think that they had only make these nutritional discoveries in order to have them taken away from them by warriors: Semites and Ancient Greeks, Teutons and Mongols. They had all gloried in the desire to take from others, to rob and kill, and no one understood that better than Eberhard Kroysing, as he stretched out his legs and flexed his toes. For some time now it had been his turn to kill and conquer, and now it was his chieftain’s privilege to steal the most desirable woman – the sweetest and loveliest in the whole tribe. The world had not come as far as it had through the fist alone, and to win her he would have to be considered and persuasive, and use all his will power and guile, combined with the ardour of courtship. He would do it. The only other serious contender had been removed from the field, that sneaky Mettner. He was to leave the next day for a German orthopaedic hospital, where according to his papers he would be fitted with a prosthetic arm. But perhaps the downy-haired mathematician had sensed that Kläre felt nothing more for him than friendship and sympathy, and no doubt that wasn’t enough for Mettner. Well, buzz off then, old pal. You’ll soon find another girl to suit you, and there’ll be no Kroysing to queer your pitch.

  Lieutenant Mettner was in fact in his uniform watching the orderly Mehlhose strap up his luggage and carry it out. ‘I hope I’ll hear from you again, Kroysing,’ he said
. ‘I think it’s a shame you’re not going back to civilian life too. You’re a talented man. In different times, that is in peacetime, you’d have become one of those crusading engineers who travels round the world doing battle with wild rivers and waterfalls – creative warriors, or warlike creators, if you prefer. But nowadays—’

  ‘I’m going to be an airman,’ said Kroysing curtly. ‘And I’m quite happy with the division of labour we’ve come up with. You work on the future, and I’ll take care of the present.’

  Mettner shook his head. ‘I’m very much afraid flying won’t agree with you.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ cried Kroysing. ‘I’ll only get back to full strength and put some weight back on when I’m regularly sat behind a machine gun inside one of those bloody boxes chucking lovely bombs down on my fellow men. Then those little Frenchmen won’t wander about so brazenly down below.’ And he pointed through the window to an aeroplane flying at a considerable height across the beautiful blue spring sky like a black insect.

  The painter Jean-François Rouard was to bomb the ammunitions train and the barracks at Vilosnes-East that night, then bear right to blow up the railway line at Damvillers. He’d received the order half an hour ago; it was to be a beautiful full moon that night, but the weather might break the next day or the day after and it might rain. He knew that stretch of countryside but was doing a test flight to check the times. The Germans would try to retake Bezonvaux, which had been a terrible loss to their line. They had sent in two regiments from Baden. Two men with the numbers 83 and 47 had been taken prisoner – crack regiments that hadn’t suddenly appeared there for fun. Well, they were going to disturb those gentlemen’s plans and extend them a warm welcome before they’d prepared their new positions. Jean-François Rouard was a go-getter – canvases, women, railway stations, it was all the same to him. He was all keyed up, pipe in his mouth, in a leather jacket and trousers, listening to the beat of the plane’s plucky engine, as he made signs to the pilot and noted his times.

  In the meantime, Lieutenant Mettner had taken his leave of Kroysing. He was to take the train around midday from Sedan or Montmédy depending on the connections and couldn’t wait any longer. His parting from Sister Kläre took place in men’s ward 3 and was brief, cordial and non-committal, and from now on Flachsbauer and Kroysing would share the room alone. Eberhard Kroysing eyed Mettner’s empty bed with philosophical calm; he’d be able to use it to spread out his maps now. Today was a good day. He’d got rid of a rival, and furthermore it was spring. The window could be left open, and the beginnings of certain songs were coming true: ‘Balmy airs approach, blue and flowing.’ He felt like getting a flute out and giving a spirited rendition of Mendelsohn’s air. And later in the day he would present a certain lady with an either/or decision. And as a sign that she was breaking definitively with her past and making a full-scale transfer to a certain Herr Kroysing, she would finally find time that evening to phone a certain high-ranking personage, a shy and silly boy at best, who would then probably turn up the following afternoon and sit about looking miserable. But it had to stop sometime.

  The ASC men in the Barkopp working gave the arrival of spring a muted welcome. Half of France was stuck to their legs, to quote Karl Lebehde. Great clods of earth clung to their boots as they ranged across country. Because of the thaw, a cache of shells and crates of ammunition, which the gunners must have used as a platform for their guns, had come to light in one of the ravines. It was going to be bloody awful job to dig them out of the muck and get them to the nearest field railway. But Sergeant Barkopp had promised them the following day off, as they’d have filled the last freight car with the new find by the time they finished work that day. Together with the three French goods wagons, which were filled with gigantic paper bags whose content was unknown, a train would be ready to leave that night, 16 axles, enough to add to the next empty transport. The ASC men were sometimes called ‘shovellers’, and the five men working on the new find justified their name that day, shovelling away layers of clay to expose the shells, carefully scraping out the loose earth between them with picks: yes, the caps were still on the fuses and so the steel cylinders were as harmless as babies’ bottles, but freezing cold, slippery and heavy, and very hard on the hands. But men who’d warmed their hands on their own urine during the great cold didn’t think twice about grasping hold of the cold, slimy earth.

  ‘Did you know we’re on guard duty tonight?’ Lebehde asked Bertin, who was beside him.

  ‘It’s all one to me. Who’s the third?’

  ‘That tall lad from Stuttgart. They’re going on about the cases of explosives. He already told me he wants number one so he can hit the sack before midnight.’

  Bertin laughed at the scorn in Lebehde’s voice. ‘He’s welcome as far as I’m concerned,’ he said. ‘I’ll take number two.’

  ‘Then I have no choice but to take number three and be the first to greet the new spring,’ grinned Lebehde. ‘I’m honoured to meet you, I’ll say. My name’s Lebehde. With whom do I have the pleasure of speaking? My name’s spring. The pleasure is all mine, Mr Spring. I’ve already met your worthy family about 40 times. I hope you won’t bite me. In that case I won’t go up to see Wilhelm tonight. I’ll take a sniff round the new field kitchen for the Oldenburgers. They’re supposed to be relieved at the front tomorrow. How about you?’

  ‘I’ll definitely make a flying visit,’ said Bertin, trying to lift the rear part of a shell.

  ‘Oh well,’ said Lebehde, ‘maybe I’ll have a heart and come too. Who knows how much more we’ll see of Wilhelm. The old joker’s supposed to be sent to Berlin soon. I’ll be jolly glad when he’s safely out of here.’

  ‘Would you swap places with him?’ asked Bertin, curious.

  Grasping the shell from his end and effortlessly lifting it up, Karl Lebehde said: ‘I can’t answer that just like that. Sometimes I might say yes, other times no, depending on my mood. If Barkopp has annoyed me, I might want nothing more to do with that bloody Hamburg bastard and be thinking: “Get a grip, man. Give yourself a hernia and follow Wilhelm.” But if I’ve just had a good bowl of soup, then I might think about how I can get things from the field hospitals cheaper than he could and stay put. Then sometimes I worry about all kinds of things when I think about the poor, old lad. What if there were a fire in those stupid barracks for example – what would happen to that baby then?’ And he shook his coppery head crossly. ‘Right, you take number two then and hoof it back down with me now.’

  Guard duty in the Prussian army involved two hours at your post and four hours of sleep. As number one started at 8pm, number two was at the sentry from 10pm until midnight and from 4am until 6am. If French planes flew over, they usually did so around 11pm, sometimes a quarter of an hour earlier, sometimes a quarter of an hour later.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Post

  PRIVATE PAHL’S CONFIDENCE and lust for life had increased markedly. Certainly, the hospital, just as expected, had all the characteristics of the class state: doctors, officers and nurses over here, rank and file patients over there, and in the middle the hospital orderlies, who were gradually, albeit much too slowly, realising where they belonged – with those who stand to attention, third-class patients, health insurance cases in uniform. But the things that were good were: they weren’t treated any worse than need be; efforts were made to make the food wholesome; and the general tone of the place was cheerful, though in a hearty way that was a little too Christian for Pahl’s taste. But better Christian than Old Prussian. It was getting easier to face the early mornings when his bandage was removed and the wound that had replaced his big toe was sterilised and dressed again. Only paper bandages had been delivered from the homeland, with wood pulp instead of cotton wool, and so no one needed to feel he was being treated worse than his neighbour in the officer’s room: they were all subject to the same law of the blockade. They were fed five times a day on the kind of food that had long been but a myth for the brave men in field gre
y: milk, not from a tin but from a live cow, white bread made with real wheat, real sugar and even real ham. The day before yesterday one of the hospital pigs had been killed by its faithful carer, Pechler the bath orderly, with a shot behind the ear. Until its death, it had proudly borne the lovely name of Posemuckel and now it was buried in numerous people’s stomachs. But there would be successors among the pigs – and among the rabbits, which the hospital fattened up on the patients’ leftovers so they didn’t go to waste. Pahl loved pork and he loved rabbit meat, and the nurses and orderlies were delighted to see that Pahl the typesetter had started to make jokes at which his ugly face with its staring eyes lit up in a childish laugh.

  Pahl had also come into conversation with officers for the first time since his training, namely the acquaintances of his comrade Bertin. They had visited him. A certain Sister Kläre had warmed to Private Bertin’s friend and had got others interested in him too, and thanks to his unique character Pahl was the last person not to merit such attention. People were captivated by his knack of saying exactly what he thought, without anger, and by his newly discovered smile, the smile of a man reborn. That engineer Kroysing was a strange fish. Pahl knew what had happened to his younger brother: that he’d been a little bit shot to death because he’d stuck his neck out for the men in his company. But his brother, this Kroysing engineer chap, was a clever man and worldly wise. So what conclusions did he draw from the incident? Did he rise above the purely personal element? Was he able to see the structure of the society he served in the case? Not bloody likely! That strong, well brought up man who ought to have known better was heaping his hostility on some miserable retired civil servant from Bavaria and his subordinates. Not even in his wildest dreams did it occur to him to ask if this Captain Niggl had not simply been carrying out society’s instructions when he pinned young Kroysing down in Chambrettes-Ferme – unwritten instructions to get rid of strike breakers in order to put the wind up their successors, to cleanse the ruling class of traitors and elevate the interests of the state above those of so-called humanity.