The Turncoat

by Siegfried Lenz

  “What are you doing? Let’s go!” Proska bawled desperately.

  The car gave a jolt that was buffered by the shock absorbers, and the panting driver forced the vehicle to dodge the pump and scurry down the narrow driveway.

  “Faster!” Proska cried. “They’re going to block our way, and then—”

  Tweee, tweee, tweee. He was interrupted by the sound of bullets striking sheet metal.

  When the car reached the wide rural road, the driver accelerated. In the fields on both sides of the road, flames blazed up wildly: an artillery barrage.

  Gradually, the cries ebbed away, along with the nervous chatter of the guns, and after they’d been driving for several minutes, a subdued rumbling and roaring was all that Proska could still hear. The driver was sitting behind the steering wheel like a robot, not speaking, not turning around. Proska leaned back in exhaustion. His headache began again, boring through his skull from inside. The cold night air coming through the broken window brought him no relief. The officer was slumped on his seat. He was unconcerned about the record, which was still spinning while the needle bounced around the label.

  The driver stopped the car in front of a farmhouse. He and Proska got out. The officer stayed seated where he was, unmoving. Proska took a few steps away from the car and watched as the driver tried to force open the officer’s door. The lock must have been damaged by gunfire or by an exploding shell.

  Proska wondered why the officer didn’t just slide over to the other side and get out, which was what he, Proska, would have done at once.

  Then the driver managed to break the lock and open the door. The officer instantly toppled out of the automobile, struck the ground headfirst, and lay still, his position strangely contorted.

  “Hey, you!” the driver called.

  Proska went to him, bent over the fallen officer, and saw that he’d taken several rounds in the throat and head.

  “Grab ahold,” the driver said.

  Together they lugged the officer into the farmhouse and laid him down in the hall.

  “You got any matches?”

  “Yes,” said Proska.

  He held out the matches in the darkness and felt the other’s hand take them from his fingers. A matchstick burst into flame. The driver dropped the match. It fell on the dead officer’s chest.

  • ELEVEN •

  It was quiet in the barn. Sometimes, to be sure, there was a rustling in the hay when a soldier turned over in his sleep, but those were the only sounds. Proska lay close to the big barn door. He was resting from his first mission. He couldn’t fall asleep. On the spot where he lay, the straw was wet, so he’d had to give up the idea of using his tarp as a blanket to lie under and instead spread it over the wet straw as a pad to lie on. Through a crack diagonally above him, damp, foggy night air came streaming into the barn. If he raised his head, he could see the crack clearly, and he could detect it without raising his head by stretching out a hand and feeling the cold draft. It wasn’t much warmer inside the barn than it was outside in the field. But at least they were somewhat sheltered from the rain.

  So this was the life those on the other side had to endure. It was just as drab, and no better. Of course, it was in some ways better, as Proska had noticed. For example, the wounded soldiers he’d encountered were exultant, even in their pain. They knew, they had seen, that their advance was continuing, their movement ever forward. Their reinforcements called out to them jokingly as they passed. The horizon was gray, the faces were gray, the destruction was gray, and the earth was gray, but morale was high and steadily rising.

  Leaves fell from those trees that were still upright. The bare branches reached skyward, clean and oddly polished-looking. Autumn. Autumn of convictions, autumn of conscience.

  From the hatch of a demolished tank lying in the field behind the barn hung a hand: a signal indicating This way to autumn.

  The barn door was gently opened and a flashlight switched on. Its jabbing beam passed Proska but stayed near him, and when at last it landed on him, it went out. Then Proska heard the sound of approaching footsteps. A soldier bent over him; it was the sentry, whom Proska was able to recognize from his Swabian dialect.

  “Ya’re the Prozka, no?” he asked.

  “Yes. What’s up?”

  “Got a message for ya. Can ya come outside?”

  Proska rose and followed the sentry out of the barn.

  The wind assaulted them at once. Proska turned up his collar, thrust his hands in his pockets, and took a few steps in place.

  “So,” the sentry said, putting his mouth close to Proska’s ear. He spoke to him softly, insistently, and at length; the longer he talked, the shorter his remaining time outside the barn seemed to him. When soldiers are on guard duty, even those who are generally mute become chatty. Proska, on the other hand, was growing more and more impatient as the sentry babbled on. He kept his eyes over on the spa park and lent the talker only half an ear. And then Proska went away. He left the sentry where he was and walked along the edge of the field. He bent forward as he walked, his head always a bit in front of his legs; his legs had trouble following his head. A farm lane brought him to a road, and he hurried along the road to the spa park. The trees in the park had given up their proud posture. They gave the impression that they would never recover from the plucking and hacking the artillery had especially subjected them to. Half-blown-off treetops hung like giant twig brooms over the abandoned paths, and the wild pigeons that had always been happily at home there no longer dared to return. The ruins of the health resort still smelled of smoke. The roof and two side walls had fallen in and buried the spacious dance floor and everything that had been on top of or under it. The only things still standing where they’d stood before were on a little veranda: two folding chairs with flaking white lacquer paint. For a long time now, no one had gone out there to sit on them.

  Proska circled the ruins and glanced at the little veranda out of the corner of his eye. The short vein in his forehead swelled with excitement: someone was sitting on one of the folding chairs, facing away from him.

  He resolutely stepped onto the veranda and said, “Hey!”

  The shape rose and came toward him, as if he’d lured it with that single word.

  “Walter!”

  It had sounded like a soft, uncertain, affectionate call. Proska recoiled.

  “Wanda!” he cried in dismay. “My God, is that really you?”

  He went to her and hugged her close and took the back of her head in his big hands and pressed her head against his throat. Her hair was damp from the moist air, but he kissed it again and again.

  The wind seemed to be looking for something in the ruins of the spa, knocking a tin can off a pile of stones and rushing breathlessly through cracks. Howling in disappointment, it kept climbing up a side wall that was still standing.

  The man put his arm around the girl’s hips and pulled the rough material of his overcoat tight against her body.

  “Come,” he said. “It’s cold. Let’s sit behind that wall. You must be freezing.”

  “I’m not,” she said, and she let him lead her.

  They sat on two dry stone slabs in the lee of the wall. Wanda drew her knees up close to her chest and trapped the bottom hem of her coat under the toes of her shoes.

  “Now I’m good until tomorrow morning,” she said.

  “How did you manage to find me?” he asked.

  “It wasn’t easy.”

  “And how did you get here?”

  “Will you come back?” she asked.

  “Back where?”

  “Back to me. To Tomashgrod. I’ve told the people there a lot about you. They’re all good people. Poor people. You said once that we…Do you still think about that?”

  “Yes, Wanda, and so we will. But I can’t come back yet.”

  “Why not?”

/>   “I’ve made a commitment, Squirrel, I’ve signed documents. So has Wolfgang. Now I’m on your side. The war isn’t over yet. Every hour, some people have to die—decent, poor young men. If it was up to them, believe me, they’d rather live. But they can’t, just because there’s this Gang, this abominable Gang, that—”

  “What’s a ‘gang’?” Wanda asked, interrupting him.

  “When an evil person is too weak, he looks for other evil people. The greatest mutual understanding in the world prevails among evil people, because evil is unambiguous…You can argue about the truth, Wanda, or even about death, as Wolfgang said once, but evil is just evil, it can’t be anything else. That’s why the Gang gets along so well, and that’s why not one of them has any pity for those who have to bite the dust for their sake.”

  “Then when will you come back to Tomashgrod?”

  “When the evil ones are in the ground.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “Nobody can predict that. But the stronger we are, the sooner they’ll disappear.”

  “And if the evil ones are stronger than your men?”

  “The evil ones are strong only on the outside. If you want to kill them, you have to strike them on the inside.”

  “I don’t understand that.”

  “But you will soon.”

  They stopped talking; he flicked away his cigarette butt, took her hand, and rubbed it between his own warm hands. The moon broke through for a brief while and looked down glumly on the two of them. It showed itself only when the heavy, low clouds rushing across the night sky allowed it to.

  After a while, Proska said, “Have you forgotten it?”

  “What?”

  “Your brother’s bad luck…I saw you crying when I went away from the Fortress.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Do you know,” he asked, “what became of Poppek and the corporal?”

  Wanda shook her head.

  “I don’t mean to torment you, Squirrel. You mustn’t take offense if I ask you these questions.”

  She closed her eyes and ran her hand through his lank hair. The corners of her mouth twitched.

  “You,” she said.

  “You’re not crying, are you, Wanda?”

  “No.”

  “Will you wait for me? I’ll come back one day.”

  “Yes, Walter. I will wait. I can wait. I’ll think about you every day.”

  “My Squirrel.”

  “You.”

  “Maybe you’ll be sleeping when I come back. I won’t wake you up right away, I’ll go close to your bed and watch your face, and all at once you’ll feel someone looking at you, you’ll open your eyes, and at first you’ll be surprised to see me. Then you’ll smile and pull your warm arms out from under the blanket and put them around me.”

  “Will it be like that?”

  “Yes,” said he, “it’ll be like that. And if you’re not asleep in your bed when I come back, then maybe you’ll be waiting for me in the train station in Prowursk. You’ll be glad, and you’ll wave to me, and I’ll ask, ‘Can I travel with you? Not far, only to the marshes. I can pay you if you want…’ Then what will you say, Squirrel?”

  “I’ll threaten you!”

  “You know what? I could get up right now and take the train with you to Tomashgrod.”

  “Or walk there,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t mind walking the whole long way.”

  “The roads are pretty soggy…”

  “So what? If they’re wet and slippery, we can slide home.”

  They were holding hands tightly, as if nothing could separate them anymore and there would be no more farewells.

  “Listen,” she said shyly.

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve brought you some cigarettes, Walter, not very many, but all I could get in Tomashgrod. The people back home are poor, and most of them smoke their tobacco in pipes. I figured you’d be glad to get a few cigarettes, especially since you don’t have any.”

  “Squirrel,” he said, and he pressed her hand to his chest.

  “Here,” she said. “I sewed the cigarettes into a piece of tarp. At first I was just going to give them to the sentry.”

  He laid his head on her lap and stared into the darkness.

  “Squirrel?” he asked after a while.

  “Yes?”

  “Maybe we’ll have a baby or two, later?”

  “No. We’ll have a baby soon, Walter.”

  He said, “I’m sure it won’t be long before I come back.”

  She rested her hand on his head and said, “We’ll have a baby sooner than that. I came here to tell you. I asked many people about you, and you weren’t easy to find. The baby will come at the end of winter. The people in Tomashgrod found out about it before you did…Are you sad now because we’re going to have a baby so soon? Why don’t you say something?”

  She touched his face here and there with her fingers.

  Proska sat up and stammered, “I knew it, I was waiting for you to tell me. If I could, I’d go home with you today, right now. If only…Now the wait won’t be so hard for you. I’ll be with you, even when I’m not there. If you knew how happy I am! We’ll see each other again tomorrow, Wanda, won’t we? Maybe we’ll stay in the barn for a whole week…You’re different from before, I hardly recognize you. Why is that?”

  “You,” she said. “Aren’t you cold? You don’t have an overcoat on.”

  “I’m not cold,” he said.

  “You’re liable to get sick.”

  “No. That doesn’t happen so fast with me, I’m tough. Will you stay here, Wanda? Can you? Maybe just one day?”

  “Yes, Walter.”

  “And we’ll see each other tomorrow?”

  “Yes.”

  “Here at the spa?”

  “Wherever you want, Walter. If you say I should come here, I’ll come here, and if you want us to meet somewhere else, I’ll go there.”

  “How was your trip? Was it hard?”

  “Not hard. Lots of soldiers helped me.”

  “Later,” Proska said, “we’ll go on a long journey together, but not on foot.”

  “Where to?” she asked softly.

  “To Sybba. It’s a village. I’m sure you have no idea where Sybba is. It’s not very big, it sits between a lake and an old pine forest. The lake’s called the Lycksee, and the forest is the Sybba Forest. We’ll go there, Wanda. We’ll go to my brother-in-law’s place. His name is Kurt Rogalski, he’s a farmer, and something of a landowner. My sister Maria is his wife. You’ll like her. And from Sybba we’ll take the train to Magdeburg. I have an uncle who lives there, my father’s brother. He works for the savings bank there. Do you know what a savings bank is?”

  They were sitting close together, warming each other. They fell silent, and their silence was enough for them. The other’s presence satisfied every wish; Walter and Wanda felt a deep, simple contentment, and their satisfaction—a holiday, a period of repose, hard to obtain and hard to possess—rooted itself in their hearts. In the distance, they could hear the drone of a single airplane: regular, monotonic, a modern lullaby.

  “I can’t stay here much longer,” said Proska. She stretched out her legs and started to get up.

  “Stay a little longer,” he said. “I have time for one more cigarette.”

  He smoked the cigarette to the end, and then they stood up and embraced, and he took her by the hand and led her through the ruins of the health resort, over the little veranda with the forgotten chairs and through the deserted park.

  “Will you come tomorrow, Wanda?”

  “Yes.”

  “At eight?”

  “Yes, if you want.”

  “And will you find a place where you can sleep?”

  “I’ve alrea
dy got one.”

  “That’s good, then.”

  He embraced her and kissed her, waved to her, and went away.

  When he was gone, she returned to the ruined spa, sat down where the two of them had been sitting shortly before, caught the bottom hem of her overcoat under the tips of her shoes, and laid her chin on her knee.

  Proska passed the sentry wordlessly, carefully opened the barn door, and lay down on his tarp. He fell asleep fast. After two hours, he was awakened again. A truck was waiting for him with its engine running.

  • TWELVE •

  The sharpshooters were nervous. They didn’t look through their telescopic sights but rather braced their chests against the edge of the trench and wiggled their fingers in their gloves and their toes in their boots, and some of them shut their left eyes tight and tried to make out a target amid the rigid branches of the bushes. From day to day, the sharpshooters counted for less and less, every day they lost a bit of significance, and they were no longer asked, as they used to be in former days, about their kill tally. Their rifle butts were without question thoroughly notched, but those were old notches, they weren’t even shiny anymore. There was no sharpshooter who didn’t long for a return to the varied and entertaining days of static combat, and from time to time some of them would make use of the pauses between attacks to rhapsodize about the past with reciprocal memories of “fun targets.” The Siberian sharpshooters were good. Proska knew them because, previously, he’d had to face them. Now, however, he was in their midst; as special adviser to their commander, he could observe them up close, and he was surprised by their modesty and by their strangely innocent faces. Every now and then he imagined they were secretly drawing a bead on him, and sometimes he turned around expecting to discover the mouth of a rifle with a telescopic sight pointed in his direction, but he invariably found only an indulgent smile or an inscrutable look. Had it not been for the daily attacks—attacks that brought them farther and farther west—Proska would have had no source of new strength and confidence. But things kept moving forward, and the fact of their steady advance seemed, in retrospect, to validate his decision in a very demonstrative fashion, and that fact, moreover, appeared to confirm that he was on the side of the just, for the just—Proska thought—always succeed in the end. He mentally calculated how long the Gang could hold out, and how much longer it would be, in the worst case, until he was free again. Proska was prepared to face the consequences of his decision. But he hadn’t yet pointed his automatic weapon at his former comrades in arms.