The Turncoat

by Siegfried Lenz

  The giant bent over, picked up the beer bottle, and returned it to its former place. As he did so, Proska could see down the neck of his shirt and observe his thickly haired chest, working at high speed. He also saw the many little black points formed by the roots of the hairs on the back of his neck, and as the giant’s face was so close to his boot, Proska speculated about what would happen should he kick his guard under the chin with the boot’s metal toe cap. If nothing else, at least he could then get his hands on the submachine gun, and with an SMG and two magazines in his possession, he’d be off to a pretty good start.

  Bogumil must have guessed what Proska was thinking, because all at once he made a vigorous backward leap and looked suspiciously and uncertainly at his prisoner. Still in a crouch, he again gestured toward the beer bottle and said categorically, “Do!”

  And when Proska refused, shaking his head, the giant released the safety catch on his submachine gun. Proska waited awhile, and nothing happened. He turned his head to the window and watched the sun dip down below the horizon. Nothing happened. Then Bogumil laid the SMG on the chair, picked up the bottle once more, approached his captive, and put the bottle in his hand. And now Proska drank. He guzzled down the acrid stuff, moved the bottle away from his mouth, belched, smacked his lips, groaned, and guzzled some more. His face became contorted. He threw his head back and guzzled. He rolled his eyes and guzzled. He felt as if hot lead were flowing down his throat, and the sounds he made were “bah” and “ehh” and “prrr.” On the other hand, this drinking seemed to give him pleasure the likes of which he’d never known before; he imagined that, by drinking, he was expiating some guilt, some offense, and after every swallow he gazed upon his guard, checking the expression on his face. Bogumil was tremendously pleased; all anger and suspicion had left him. His eyes were beaming with uncomplicated happiness. He was standing with his mouth half open, his chin loose, and his jaws ready to snap shut, a nutcracker waiting to be put to work.

  He had won.

  Then he clapped Proska on the shoulder and pulled him close and threw him onto the chair so hard that its legs creaked dangerously. Proska uttered a deranged laugh; the rotgut liquor made him insensible to pain.

  “Ty,” cried the giant, “ty, widzisz, co ja mam. What I have here. See what I can. What I here have. Knife, little shiny knife. Little knife can kill big man. That not good. And here, what I have here? Muscle! And now what I do with knife and muscle? You watch what I can. Tu patrz no, look over here, you duck feather, you look.”

  Bogumil bared an arm, an arm thick as a stovepipe, and flexed his biceps. He lifted his eyebrows high, made sure that Proska was looking at him, and with his other hand raised his little knife over his head. The little knife hovered almost a meter above the mound of his biceps.

  One final time, the giant checked the direction the knife would take when he released it—he gazed at the sharp point and the muscle in turn—and then he smiled a superfluous, pathetic smile and opened the fingers the knife was dangling from. It dropped straight down, a flashing, triumphant exclamation point, struck the rigid biceps, bounced off, and fell to the floor. The giant straightened up, grinning, and Proska babbled, “Fabulous, I’ll be damned! Bogumil, you’re an artist of knife-throwing! Bravo! Standing ovation! Did you hear it? Can you swallow fire too? I knew somebody who could swallow fire. There’s a whole bunch of artistes in the world, huh? They’re everywhere, we’ve got ’em, and you’ve got ’em too. Got any cigarettes? Pull one out of your nose, man. Show me what else you can do. If I don’t get anything to smoke in the next hour, I’m going to die of abstinence. Boh! You don’t understand a word I’m saying, do you? Tell me, Bogumil, are you this stupid, or are you just pretending to be this stupid? Early tomorrow morning, I guess they’re going to come for me…You should have met Melon, he knows something about fire-eating. But why am I talking so much! Come here, little brother, I want to give you a hug.”

  Proska got up, swaying a little, stretched his hands skyward, and made a few hopeless grasping movements, as though he wanted to pull the sky down into the office and keep it there as a witness to what he now planned to do. With his hands up, he stumbled into the giant and tried to catch hold of him. But Proska never fulfilled his purpose, the big man recoiled from him, and every time Proska got close, he received a blow in the chest that sent him stumbling backward.

  “Bogumil,” Proska stammered, “come here, for goodness’ sake, let me hug you. ’Cause we are brothers, you and me. We’re dependent on each other. You’re here, because I’m here, and I’m here, because you’re here. You gave me your rotgut schnapps, we’ll never try to hurt each other again! I won’t shoot you, and you won’t shoot me. Come on, this comedy is over, why do you keep pushing me away, hey! What’s the meaning of this? I just said we were brothers. Brothers, Bogumil. My name is Walter, brother. I’ll give you my sweat liner. Everything’s been in vain—Stani and Zacharias and Captain Kilian. Come here!—Ow, you mad dog. You don’t care about any of that, do you? Don’t you want to be my brother?”

  The giant pushed him back hard. Proska slammed into the wall and fell to his knees and looked up sorrowfully. And then Bogumil spoke, serious and cold: “As soon as you get beat, you want to be brothers. We know this tune. Only when you need mercy, when your dirty life becomes dear to you, that’s when you talk about brotherhood. As long as you’re the masters, you shit on humility and compassion. Oh, we know this tune. You thought I was stupid. You thought I couldn’t understand what you were saying. I understand everything perfectly, every word and every thought. But your thoughts are so pathetic, so slimy. I ought to break your neck. Brothers: that’s what the losers always say. There’s no kind of repentance in the world so repulsive and so cheap. You say brother, and everything’s forgotten, right? Would you have called me brother if you had been the one with the gun? And if you’d had to guard me? You would certainly not have said such a thing. It would never have entered your mind. If you had said brother to me yesterday and tried to hug me, then I would have gone along gladly, but today I can’t. I am indeed here because you’re here, and you’re here because I’m here, but if I wanted to, I could take you over to the embankment and shoot you down. You’re dependent on me, that’s true, but I’ve never been dependent on you. Sit in your chair, stay in your corner, and don’t move, because if you should move, I could fly into a rage, and then you’d be lost. Behave as though you weren’t there, that’s your wisest course of action at the moment.”

  The giant spat and walked over to the window. Proska was instantly sober. What he’d heard he hadn’t heard in a dream. The bad liquor tried to persuade him not to take Bogumil’s words seriously, to let them bounce off him and so lose their penetrating effectiveness. But the gush of equanimity generated by the alcohol was too weak. Proska stayed where he was, lying against the wall, dizzy with shame, his hands raised defensively in front of his face, as if such a gesture could cancel the other’s presence. He was badly frightened by the change in the giant and the way he’d spoken to him. Proska had been thoroughly taken in.

  Only the breathing of the two men was audible in the room. It grew dark. The darkness came in and joined them and prevented them from looking each other in the eye. That was good. The darkness encircled their foreheads and caressed them. The darkness stepped in the way of the day’s last clouds. Outside the landscape fell away, fell backward into the silence. Blackness froze the trees, and the sky covered its own tracks. There was no trace of twilight left in anyone’s eye. And distance was near, distance came to everyone. As always, the moon, the yellow guard dog, was on its chain.

  Footsteps sounded on the gravel stones between the railroad tracks. Soon the steps could be heard on the other side of the left-hand wall and then in the entrance. The door was opened, and a man peered in.

  “Dobra noc,” he whispered. “Bogu, co ty tam patrzysz? Bogu, hej.”

  Bogumil slowly turned to the door. He went out.


  Proska raised his head and observed that it was dark. The voices of the people conversing in the corridor could be heard through the door. Proska couldn’t distinguish the voices, but he had the feeling they were talking about him. He had no wish to leave the corner he was lying in. Here, he thought, he’d be somewhat safe from Bogumil’s eyes.

  And all at once someone kicked Proska, a knee grazed his ear, the toe of a boot struck him in the thigh, and he curled himself up like a caterpillar. The man who’d stumbled over him stood still and listened. Proska didn’t move.

  “Is someone there?” the unknown person said.

  Proska jumped; he knew that voice. He stood up soundlessly and said, “Yes, someone’s here.”

  “Walter, is that you?”

  “Yes, Wolfgang.”

  “My God, what are you—”

  “Quiet, not so loud…Milk Roll, my boy, come here, come on, sit down. Here, I’m standing against the wall, give me your hand. Careful! There’s a chair. Be calm, otherwise he’ll come right back in, that—”

  “He won’t come in here anymore.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He went away.”

  “You saw him go?”

  “Yes, he went away, and now the guy who brought me here is sitting outside. The door’s locked.”

  “Well, where were you, Wolfgang? I looked everywhere for you. I was furious at you, because I thought you’d just picked up and left on your own. Then I even started thinking they had killed you.”

  “Are you drunk, Walter?”

  “Was drunk! So it smells like schnapps in here? I can well believe it. That Bogumil gave me some, that…I had to drink it.”

  “Do you know where we are?”

  “Of course I know where we are,” Proska said.

  “And do you know what they intend to do with us?”

  “How could I know that?” Proska said. “They told me nothing. Do you know anything?”

  “No, but I can imagine.”

  “And what do you imagine? The railroad embankment? Facing the railroad?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Do you have a cigarette? A butt would be enough, Wolfgang. I’m dying for a smoke, I can barely stand it. If I thought I could get a cigarette right now, I’d let them do whatever they wanted with me. My blood’s getting thick and backing up everywhere. Don’t you have something? Just a few crumbs of tobacco?”

  “I don’t have any cigarettes,” said Wolfgang, “and even if I did, I wouldn’t give you any. It will be a slow process, but you’re going to have to get used to the idea of becoming a nonsmoker. And here you have an excellent opportunity to do that—nobody’s demanding anything of you—”

  “Will you please be quiet? If I want answers like that, I can get them from myself.”

  Wolfgang sat down on the floor next to Proska, cocked a knee, and laid his chin on it.

  “Man,” Proska said after a while.

  Milk Roll kept quiet.

  “It’s all over now, Wolfgang. This is the end. When we were going back to the Fortress, they were already there, waiting for us. Alma’s dead, and as for the others—Melon, Thighbone, Stehauf, and Poppek—I don’t know what’s become of them. Maybe they’re not alive anymore. We’re still alive, you and I, but I can’t figure out why. Is it a coincidence? Is it luck? Why don’t you answer me? Come on, are you deaf? I’m talking to you.”

  “And I’m listening closely,” said Wolfgang.

  “You listen the way trees listen.”

  “That’s not enough?”

  “Give me a break. Let’s talk about something else, like how you came here.”

  “Good,” said Wolfgang. “I want to tell you. You’ll hear the whole thing, I won’t leave anything out. And when I’m finished, if you think you have to strike me dead, then you have my permission to do it. I probably won’t try to defend myself.”

  Proska laughed. He gave Wolfgang a push and laughed. But he didn’t feel very comfortable doing so.

  Wolfgang said, “I ran away because I couldn’t stand being with you all any longer. I could have put up with you on an individual basis, but all of you together, organized Germans with a sense of duty—that was too much for me to bear. I knew almost all of you were living in the Fortress unwillingly, and I knew you were all homesick and you hated the people who sent you there and those who were there before you. It’s decent enough, I suppose, to feel hatred for one side, but if a man finds himself compelled to hate both sides, then he has to admit that he’s in a dilemma of his own making. Germans take denial so far that they can stare into an abyss and consider it a danger only for others.”

  “Just tell me where you were,” Proska interrupted him impatiently.

  “Where I was? I ran away fast so you wouldn’t be able to find me, so none of you could stop me. I ran straight into their arms.”

  “Whose?”

  “You know exactly who I mean, so why ask?”

  “You ran to the civilians, to the partisans.”

  “Yes. And the partisans brought me to an officer. He’d obviously been directing their operations for a long time. He wore a uniform and spoke German. He knew all our names, and I got the impression he felt a little sympathy for me. Of course, I wouldn’t swear to that. I asked him right away if he knew anything about you, and he said you were the only one unknown to him. And by the way, he was unexpectedly friendly to me.”

  “So that’s why he’s had you locked up in here?”

  “He may send someone to get me early tomorrow morning. He alluded to that…They’re men like us, cobblers and farmers and carpenters. There are some poor wretches among them, as there are among us. And I’ve seen that they sometimes tremble, and that they carry around the same mass of desires that we do…Why aren’t you saying anything now, Proska? You get a kick out of holding your tongue on this subject, is that it? You’d like to blackmail me with your silence, right? I’m a turncoat, a rat, a traitor, isn’t that what you want to say? The most brutal form of sadism is the sadism of silence.”

  “Finish your story,” Proska said.

  “There’s not much left to tell. I’ll probably—”

  Wolfgang stopped talking. A head appeared on the other side of the window. There was something oddly calm about the way the head moved, from left to right, as if someone were solemnly carrying it past the window on a pole.

  “The second guard,” Proska whispered. “I don’t get the idea that they’re indifferent to us. The other one’s sitting in front of the door.”

  The head appeared again, soundlessly and regularly following its route.

  “We’ll have to get used to them…What were you about to say, Wolfgang?”

  “He can hear me.”

  “Are you afraid of that skull?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then.”

  “I’ve offered myself to them. Maybe they’ll take me.” Wolfgang swallowed. “Idle, passive pacifism is an impotent ghost,” he said. “Anyone who constantly talks about how they’re against war but is content to leave it at that and does nothing else to eliminate war belongs in the museum of pacifism. We must arrive at a form of active pacifism, and, precisely in the current case, we need to be prepared to take serious and drastic action. Nothing can be done through intellectual effort alone. If we want to achieve a festive life, we first have to accept an active life. After all, who controls the world’s values? You do, you alone. Things receive and retain their value only in the spotlight of the individual consciousness. Moral motives are always individual affairs. We should finally use our strength to prepare the kind of future we can find security in one day.”

  Proska said, “So you’ve switched sides. You’ve done an about-face. Do you know what that means?”

  “I’ve always chosen the path of greatest suffering.”

 
“You’re still suffering right now?”

  Wolfgang looked at the disembodied head, which passed the window as though on a track, and answered, “The suffering won’t ever stop, it will be with me always. But I won’t need to stand in a corner if we’re asked one day, you and me and all the rest, what we’ve done to attain the great object of our desires.”

  “What do you mean by the great object of our desires? A life without digestion problems?”

  “Your sarcasm is cheap, Walter, but it’s not infectious. What’s really contagious is nationalistic resentment. That resentment is the root of German arrogance and the source of the goddamned conviction we have that we’re the chosen people.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “Do you doubt it?”

  “So you’ve changed sides. Just like that, you’ve turned your back on your comrades.”

  “Comrades? Take it from me, there’s no comradeship without compassion. We shouldn’t waste another word on that subject.”

  “Listen up, you Milk Roll, you. I know you have some highly educated bees in your bonnet, but there’s one thing I have to tell you: when a man makes an agreement among comrades, he keeps his word. You ran away and left me to guard the bridge alone. Didn’t you think about the agreement we made? You’re a Judas.”

  “Yes,” said Wolfgang. “I’m a Judas. And I became one for your sake. I ran away because I didn’t want to influence you…Even though now it may look like my betrayal puts the others in danger, one day it will be clear that I did what I did for their own good. You know me, Walter, and you can be certain that the step I’ve taken will prove more beneficial than harmful. I’ve betrayed my comrades because I feel sorry for them. And you—you can spit on me if you want, you have the right.”

  “If I spat on you, you’d hiss like a hot stone. You’re already glowing with suffering, man. I could heat up some canned food on your cheeks.”

  “Then do it, if you have some.” Melancholy and bitterness lay in Wolfgang’s response. He wished that the night would never end, that it would stay dark from then on.