The Turncoat

by Siegfried Lenz

  “Where were you?” asked Willi.

  “Well, back now,” said the tall soldier amicably.

  “I want to know where you were. What you did is called unauthorized absence from duty. Do you know that?”

  “But I bring back—”

  “Close your trap or you’ll get mosquitoes in your lungs. I know Stani’s death hit you hard. But that’s no reason to go missing from the Fortress for twelve hours or more. What do you suppose would happen if everyone did that? Just so you know, I’m going to report you to Tomashgrod. Then again, maybe not, I haven’t decided yet. If you do better, this screwup might not turn out so bad. No firing squad for you this time…And now tell me what you’ve been up to, and where, all this time. That’s a Russian MG. Did you find it?”

  “Captred, sir, captred.”

  “You captured it?”

  Melon waddled over inconspicuously so as to hear the interrogation better.

  “Yessir. MG captred. When they bury poor Stani, I have feeling like they bury my own body.”

  “Ah,” said Willi. “You had that feeling.”

  “Yessir. And right then I think everything for me schwistko jedno, undifferent, all same. Head not knowing where foots marching. Big circus in head, and I take gun and go to big river.”

  “And you took a nice, refreshing bath, or what?”

  Thighbone made a dismissive gesture. “Nah,” he said. “I listen water, and when listening finish, night already there. So what I do? I sneak down to railroad. Everything beautiful dark, nobody can see me. So I lying by railroad, and MG go rat-tat-tat. And little later again, rat-tat-tat. I wait and wait. Then two men with MG come by. Very quiet, but I see them. And when they close to me…well, yes, I go rat-tat-tat too, twice, and everything over. Here is MG.”

  The tall soldier looked over at Melon and said with a smile, “I have big hunger, could eat two loaves army bread. Knees shaking already. And bending, soft like sourdough.”

  “Give him something to eat,” the corporal commanded, shaking his head.

  Melon and Thighbone disappeared into the Fortress.

  “Is mail come?” the tall soldier asked as he walked over to the stove table.

  “There was something for you,” said the artiste.

  “Where? Give here. Must read right away.”

  “Wait a minute. Do you know the latest?”

  “How can I know what happen in Gleiwitz when I not there?”

  “Zacharias’s wife had a baby!”

  “Ah, moi Jesus, real happy news! No more so many dreams about it. He dream little baby into world. Very beautiful, yes? He already know big news?”

  “No. Willi has thought up something good. He wants to surprise him.”

  “What his plan?”

  “What his plan is, I don’t know. But it must be good…I can’t give you the cheese, it’s for tomorrow evening.”

  “Sst, not so loud. You like trumpet. Milk Roll and new man sleeping.”

  “They don’t hear us.”

  “How to know?…Where is mail for me?”

  “Here, a little parcel and a letter.”

  “Letter from Father, and parcel…parcel from Father too.”

  As the tall soldier passed the two sleepers, he looked them in the face; then he sat on his bed and tried to open his parcel. He used his teeth to pull on the packing string; it didn’t give. He tried to loosen the knots with his fingertips, but the knots wouldn’t cooperate. Then, overcome with impatience, Thighbone reached into his watch pocket, drew out his cigarette lighter, flicked it on, and held it under the string. The flame licked the fibers, stretching and scorching them, and then spread along the twine, so that when the man gave it a single hard pull, it burst in half. He stripped off the rest of the packing string and tore the paper apart. Gradually there came into view a box that had once contained Osram lightbulbs, and when he opened it and shook its contents onto his blanket, he clicked his tongue for joy. Before him lay, still adorned with their price tags, two sturdy pike-fishing lines, along with two red-and-white floaters so big and ponderous that no living bait fish could have done much to disturb their calm; in addition, Thighbone found four leaden balls to weigh down the lines, a spoon lure whose hook was camouflaged with red feathers, and an artificial fly. For his purposes, however, the uselessness of the latter was immediately clear to him.

  Pozekai lo, he thought. Just wait. Now you can look forward to frying pan. These lines you won’t know to break, not these lines. We’ll see which of us stronger. I older than you, and cleverer. Just wait, Mister Pike!…Father understood me dobschä. Except artificial flies worth nothing, hooks too small. But spoon lure good. When is in your mouth, pan already warm.

  He put the fishing accessories back in the Osram box and shoved it under his pillow. Then he stood up, took off his pants, checked the damage, and resolved to sew up the tear before lunch.

  * * *

  —

  Poppek said, “Stop! We’ve lugged him far enough. Put him down!”

  “Let’s carry him over there,” Zacharias suggested. “Under the blackberry bushes.”

  “But then he’ll be right beside the private road.”

  “That doesn’t matter. We don’t go to the river very often.”

  “All right, good. Then we won’t lose our way anymore. A funny kilometer stone, huh?”

  They dragged the dead dynamite priest over a clearing and laid him down next to some blackberry bushes. His facial features were contented, relaxed; he seemed satisfied with what had befallen him. The exit wound in his chest had stopped bleeding; his eyes were tightly closed; a thin trickle of ditch water flowed from one corner of his mouth to his weak chin. Nothing about the priest suggested that he was bearing his current situation, namely death, reluctantly—except, to tell the truth, his hands, which looked tense and cramped. His fingers were curved, as if attempting to grasp whatever he’d just been thinking about. And so his hands and his face were in an unusual contrast to one another; the former still remembered life, but the latter already showed the signs of a sublime equanimity, the consolations of a timeless state.

  Zacharias noticed this as he and Poppek stood gazing down at the dead man and said, “His hands look like they were trying to grab hold of a branch. Look at them.”

  “He wanted to pull the dynamite sticks out of his pocket,” said Poppek.

  “But he wasn’t carrying any dynamite sticks.”

  “Do you know that for sure?”

  “Willi said he could have been mistaken.”

  “And so? You can’t wish a man back to life. Bullets don’t understand jokes…Do you feel sorry for him?”

  Zacharias bent down and folded the priest’s hands over his chest.

  “Maybe he really wasn’t to blame,” he said.

  “You mean, for his death?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think he made any contribution to his birth? We can’t defend ourselves from coming into the world, and we don’t have enough influence to extend our lives for as long as we’d like. So I don’t see why we should mourn for the dead more than for the unborn. If you want to feel pity for this man, you should also pity the child your wife’s going to give you…Look at this fellow. You can step on his hand, he won’t feel any pain; you can pull out all his teeth, no shot, no drugs, and he won’t stir. This man isn’t here anymore, theoretically, you understand that; he’s gone, finished, blown up. You can’t call every piece of rubber a balloon.”

  “No, of course not. I understand what you’re saying, but nevertheless—”

  “What does ‘nevertheless’ mean? We have to free ourselves from certain ideas. When you see a dead bird, you don’t immediately think about the songs he might have sung. What you really see is nothing but a bag of useless matter. And when you look your dead father in the face—”

 
“No!” Zacharias cried. “Stop it! I have a different opinion. You talk like a block of ice. It’s better you lend a hand and we’ll lay this man a little farther under the bushes.”

  “You dream about your wife too much,” Poppek said, bending down.

  They pulled the corpse deeper into the undergrowth, laid him on his back, gathered branches, and covered him, so that no passerby could tell he was there—unless a strong wind pounced on him in his repose and blew his green hiding place apart.

  Then the men stepped onto the narrow, so-called private road. And after they looked back one more time, they started walking one behind the other—their weapons braced against their hips, ready to fire—in the direction that would take them to the river.

  The young forenoon lay innocently upon the marshes; blithe and foolish, it rubbed the landscape into good cheer.

  Rise and shine now, silly man-child,

  Rub the morning off your eyelids;

  Soon the night will come and thrash you,

  And the water keeps on flowing.

  To be, just once, an element, water or earth, and moreover to know you’re an element. To be water: to carry ships patiently, to bear your brother on your back; to have, as your home, a thousand homes; to be an element, not just to feel yourself as water, but to wash away the bridges of irreconcilability; to press onward, to become bigger and stiller; to carry stillness into the sea, into the world. Silence is good, and humility is good. Go, Brother, go to the water; look down. Make yourself become an element! Lose the language of money, the words of an agreed-upon deception, the pomaded gestures of vanity. Fling away prejudice like a too-tight shoe. We shall meet, Brother, when you are I and I am you; when we bear the burden on our shoulders, when you see with my eyes and I with yours, when you hear with my ears, when you and I have a single heart in common; we shall meet, Brother, when we become elements, water or earth, and when we know that’s what we are.

  Poppek stopped suddenly before a birch and said, “Here’s a well-grown tree. I’d like to wrap my thighs around it.”

  “Now? Does Melon need more firewood already? He still has two big piles.”

  “We can leave it lying here.”

  “I feel sorry for the young trees,” Zacharias said. “You always just break off their tops.”

  “They don’t notice.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “You can wrap your bandage pack around the wound.”

  “Leave the birch alone, Helmut.”

  “Why should I?”

  There was something threatening in Zacharias’s voice. He took a few steps backward and repeated, “Leave this birch alone, I said. If you lay a finger on it, you’ll have to deal with me.”

  “Are you going to shoot me?”

  “Keep your hands off the tree!”

  “Do you know what that means to me?”

  “I couldn’t care less. If you kill this birch, I can’t vouch for your safety,” Zacharias said determinedly.

  Poppek moved toward him, showed a faint grin, and declared, “I knew you were sentimental. But I didn’t realize how sentimental you really are. That’s probably because you dream about your wife and the baby so much. The marriage bed is where sentimentality grows best. Your bed must be particularly soft, no?”

  “One more word—”

  “Oh, are we about to get mad now? Come on, I’ll spare the tree’s life. We have to go down to the river. Maybe we can take a quick dip, it’s going to be awfully hot today.”

  Helmut gave the older man a somewhat awkward clap on the shoulder, nodded to him, and walked resolutely on. Zacharias followed him at some distance.

  They came to the river and stood side by side, unspeaking. Unless they changed direction, they could go no farther. They stared silently at the water, each of them contemplating the other’s reflection.

  He looks pretty distorted, thought Zacharias.

  What a fluid physiognomy, thought Poppek.

  Sighing, they sat down and removed their helmets. Zacharias used his handkerchief to wipe the sweat off his bald spot and then ran his fingers through his remaining hair.

  “Shall we be friends?”

  “Why, was there a problem?”

  “You want a cigarette?” Poppek asked.

  “Yes, I forgot mine…It’s pretty damn hot.”

  “It’ll get even hotter. Do you happen to know whether a man with a large bald patch is more susceptible to sunstroke than one who has a full head of hair?”

  “Are you alluding to my chrome dome?”

  “God forbid! The subject really interests me. I have a weakness for bald heads in general. Do you know where that comes from?”

  “Nah.”

  “Well, how could you? Once I read about someone who had the idea of renting bald heads for advertising space.”

  “And?”

  “And it’s something I think about. When the war’s over—it has to end sometime—then maybe entrepreneurs will find opportunities. We two, for example, could do some fantastic business. I’ll be your advertising director.”

  “And what am I supposed to do?”

  “Listen! After the war, people are going to start advertising again, they’ll have to: for first-class scrap metal, for RIF soap—the stockpiles are enormous—and, of course, for another war. What would you say, for example, to having ‘Correspondence Courses for Blood Donors’ written on your bald head? Or maybe ‘How to Treat Young Girls on the Sofa,’ or ‘Your conscience will shine like this if you use Hempel hand grenades. Samples and brochures upon request.’ Of course, we’ll have to get some business interested in this plan. If everything goes right, we could make a bundle. All you’d have to do would be to hang around places where there’s a lot of foot traffic.”

  “And you’d collect the money.”

  “I’d eliminate the competition.”

  Zacharias smiled and stroked his gleaming pate with patriarchal delight. “Not bad, not bad,” he said. “The most important thing is to get this apparatus home in one piece…At the moment, though, I could go for a quick bath. We’ll stay refreshed for the rest of the day. Are you coming with me?”

  “Of course. But don’t you think one of us ought to stand guard on dry land while the other one goes in? Better safe than sorry.”

  “We don’t have much time. Who’s going to be hanging around here at this time of day? Come on, strip. One dive will do.”

  One dive!

  The two men quickly took off their clothes. Naked, they craned their necks to see whether there was anyone around after all, looked at each other appraisingly, and quick-stepped to the water.

  One dive!

  Splat said the ancient river when they stamped into it. The sun was still promising a little too much; the water was colder than they’d assumed it would be. The next step: knee deep. Air bubbles detached themselves from the bottom, climbed shakily up the soldiers’ lower legs, reached the surface, and died.

  Poppek said, “Brrr,” snapping his fingers for good measure.

  “The bottom’s muddy,” said Zacharias. “But it’s sandier a little farther on.”

  He grimaced and wrinkled his scalp. He found the water cold too. Cautiously, he dipped his hands below the surface and then struck and stirred it. He sank into a slow crouch, and when he stood upright again, all trembling, he thought he was sufficiently cooled off to leave his feet and dive. With force and grim determination, he squatted down hard and then shot into the air for half a second; during his flight, or rather fall, he clapped his hands together above his head before disappearing into the river. When he resurfaced, he threw himself onto his back and began to kick, so that it seemed a feeble motor was driving him over the surface. When this method had brought him a third of the way across the river, he trod water and looked back to Poppek, who was holding on to a wil
low shrub with one hand and carefully wetting his chest with the other.

  “You coming or not?” Zacharias yelled. “When you’re all the way in, it gets warmer.”

  Poppek didn’t answer.

  “Shall I come and get you?” Zacharias called again, but then he turned around and swam toward the middle of the river.

  Suddenly, on the other side, a submachine gun raised its dry, metallic voice. The shots whizzed over the river like swift water birds and chirped as they penetrated the surface and sent nasty little fountains spurting up. Rat-a-tat-tat, plish-plish, sss-plish.

  One dive!

  Helmut immediately jumped onto the bank and threw himself down in the grass, next to his clothes. He lifted his face and shouted, “Dive! Get underwater!”

  Rat-a-tat, said the echo.

  “Head down, Zacharias!” Helmut grabbed his rifle, jammed the butt against his shoulder. How oily, hard, and stubborn the stock felt! The shots came from there, from that stand of reeds. He lowered his weapon again and filled his lungs: “Stay un-der! Za-cha-ri-as!”

  There, in the reeds. So shoot. Twenty-eight rounds still in the magazine. Automatic fire. Come on, shoot! Send twenty-eight rounds on a little journey. Looking for their target. Rifle butt tight against naked shoulder; pressure point; squeeze. There, it’s coming from the reeds. Send all twenty-eight. Faster, the trigger’s impatient, feverish for death. Poppek pulled the trigger, and the bullets swept over the water and shaved the reeds on the opposite bank.

  One more burst. All twenty-eight. What are you waiting for? And the bullets left the barrel and mowed down the reeds.

  “Za-cha-ri-as!”

  Helmut jumped up—he could do so with impunity, as he was standing behind a bush.

  Of Zacharias, nothing to be seen; he had gone under without a trace, and with the exception of his abandoned clothes, there was no indication that he had ever been there.

  He’ll swim underwater, he’ll follow my advice…he understood me exactly…he should be back here soon…covering fire…I have to shove in a new magazine…over there, in the reeds…a cartridge case between my toes…kick it away…why doesn’t he come?…He should be here by now…hope the current doesn’t carry him too far downriver…