Outside Verdun

^{CHAPTER ONE} The blessed island

THE BATTLE FOR Verdun had been fought and lost, but nobody said that. The German communiqués had revised the aims of the operation, invented the ‘battle of attrition’ and recast the truth, and there were a lot of big kids who believed this fairytale. Raw materials and supplies essential for life were stretched to the utmost, diluted and mixed with substitutes. But what had just about sufficed in the second winter of the war failed in the third. Not enough butter, not enough meat, not nearly enough bread, although it had been ‘extended’ with bran and potatoes; hardly any pulses or fresh vegetables, no ham, almost no eggs, and no noodles, millet, oatmeal or semolina delivered from abroad. Leather was running out, as were linen and woollen cloth; you only got clothes if you had a ration coupon, and they were often made with unsatisfactory new materials. When fruit and sugar disappeared into the jam factories, notices were put up encouraging children to collect fruit kernels for their oil. For the same reason, sunflowers were planted, and linseed and beechnuts crushed. Wool to darn stockings and thread to mend shirts were precious goods hunted down by anxious housewives. And just as plant compounds and chemical mixtures appeared in tins and tubes as sham food, so paper masqueraded as clothes, twine, bags and shoelaces. Newspapers and cookery books were full of recipes for conjuring up tasty dishes out of insipid mixtures of potatoes, turnips and brine. No vitamins, no carbohydrates, no protein and still fully fit for work – that’s what the physiologists and doctors preached in order to secure final victory in a war that had long since been lost. Germany was trying to triumph over the whole world, all reason and the course of history and development in the last century. That diabolical instrument of war, the British blockade, was at last being countered – so said the powers that be – with something equally effective: the torpedoing of all cargo ships on the seas. In half a year, Britain would sue for peace. And the nation believed this. Unaccustomed to measuring their rulers’ speeches against reality or demanding accountability for spilt blood and the wasted years of their lives, the people worked in the factories, fields and cities, sent their children to be soldiers, washed themselves with clay soap and paper towels, travelled in unheated railway carriages, froze in lukewarm flats, sunned themselves in the glow of future glories and unverified reports of victories, mourned their dead, spied on the healthy and patiently allowed themselves to be ridden into destruction.

There was still a last streak of smoky red in the evening sky, as Bertin climbed up to Dannevoux field hospital, with Sergeant Barkopp’s permission, to find out how Pahl was getting on (but above all to see Eberhard Kroysing again). From the rear, a minor road wound up the hill to the plateau, then past some barbed wire and wooden fencing to the hospital offices. Several wings enclosed a large open square, and the barracks loomed like a headland above a plain. It was outside visiting hours, and Bertin was greeted curtly and told he should kindly keep to the prescribed times displayed on the gate. After much explaining and a bit of toing and froing he was finally admitted through a back door at the top of a small wooden staircase. It led into a white corridor that clearly went through the section for seriously ill patients. Bertin’s heart contorted with anxiety, and the groaning he heard pierced his thin layer of self-protection. The smell of iodoform and lysol wafted towards him. When a nurse squeezed past him with a covered bucket, the sudden proximity of pus and rancid bodily fluids nearly made him sick. Through an open door, he glimpsed thick, white bandages, a row of beds, a leg suspended in a pulley, the backs of two nurses. He might have grasped then the full terrible significance of it all, but instead he closed up like a mussel caught in an unwelcome current of water and carried on looking for men’s ward 3, which he found at the end of the second long corridor on the left, and on the right room 19.

Eberhard Kroysing greeted Bertin, who looked shy and unkempt, with undisguised joy. Kroysing sat up in his bed beaming and stretched out his powerful arm to Bertin, letting the ASC man’s hand disappear in his. Kroysing’s deep voice filled the room. ‘Wow!’ he exclaimed. ‘Bertin! This is definitely your best deed of this fine New Year, and you’ll be richly rewarded for it in heaven, which, like the rest of us, you seem to have to dodged so far. Now get some of those layers off, you old grey onion. Hang that lice-infested gear in the corridor. There’s a coat stand on the right outside the door.’ When Bertin asked suspiciously if things didn’t get stolen even here, there was a roar of laughter from all three beds; he could still hear it through the closed door. Obediently, he took off his head protector, coat and canvas jacket, returning in his tunic.

The room smelt of bandages and wounds, cigarettes and soap. But it was warm, light and clean – to Bertin it seemed like an enviable, heavenly existence. He might easily have thought that the times must be pretty crazy if pain, blood and wounds were the price to be paid for such modest comforts. But he had no such thoughts; he was much too steeped in the world of war with its twisted values. Besides, Kroysing immediately commanded his attention. He told him to sit on the bed, introduced him to the two lieutenants, Mettner and Flachsbauer, as a friend he’d inherited from his late brother, failing to notice that Bertin was starving, freezing and miserable. Bertin asked Kroysing how he was – ‘Great, of course,’ he replied – and to tell his story, but he was reluctant. Storytelling wasn’t his game. It was Bertin’s game, and everyone should stick to what they knew. The last time they’d met had been on the other side of Wild Boar gorge. Since then, he’d been in the thick of it. They hadn’t got Douaumont back, but they had dug themselves in quite nicely up on Pepper ridge and laid a load of mines, but just as they were about to let the Frogs have it, that 15 December business started, putting a stop to their fun. He, Kroysing, must have spent too much time sitting in the fort and the trenches because he’d lost the knack of doing a break in a field battle or he wouldn’t have had the misfortune to throw himself into a hole that was much too shallow when the advancing battery’s damned shells reached him. The shell hole had been deep and steep enough in itself but it was frozen and full of ice, and so Kroysing ended up with his great knuckle of a right leg sticking up in the air and it was caught by a shell splinter that sliced right through his puttee and shin bone, though it didn’t bisect his calf bone. He’d hobbled over to the dressing station on his stick like some demented grasshopper and had passed out there. Well, now he’d paid his debts to the French in full and could relax. He had an excellent doctor here in the hospital, and the care was first-class. For now, he wanted for nothing. The bone was healing nicely, and a piece of ivory had been inserted to replace some damaged fragments – as he’d said, the head physician was a hot shot and had worked miracles. He’d not yet decided what to do when he was better – there was still plenty of time to think about it. And now it was time to hear Bertin’s news. He must have a lot to tell too. Above all, how was Kroysing’s old friend, Captain Niggl? Here they were under the Western Group Command – west of the Meuse – and heard about as much about the eastern sector than they did about Honolulu, although they hadn’t crossed the river, geographically speaking.

There was indeed a lot to tell, said Bertin, and he began with Captain Niggl’s advancement and the great fame he’d acquired.

‘The Iron Cross, first class!’ shrieked Kroysing. ‘That cowardly swine! That shuddering pile of dirt!’ And he burst into a fit of laughter, then nearly coughed his eyes out from choking.

Someone yanked open the door, and a forehead and a couple of strands of blonde hair appeared. In a pleasant Rhenish accent a voice said: ‘Boys, keep the noise down, would you? The boss will have a fit.’

‘Sister Kläre,’ cried Kroysing. ‘Stay here! Listen to this!’

The nurse waved a hand and said, ‘Maybe later.’

Kroysing sat in bed, pale and wild-eyed. ‘I’ll be hanged if I’m going to put my dog tag back on after this,’ he said. And he described to his two room mates, battle-hardened front-line soldiers like himself, how he had ensnared the ASC captain at Douaumont – a man who’d have done a bunk if he could have and would never have gone near the front of his own free will.

The two lieutenants jeered at his fury. ‘You’re so provincial,’ said Lieutenant Mettner equably. ‘I always suspected as much. Instead of being upset because some squit is getting a medal, you should be amazed you managed an Iron Cross.’ Kroysing’s caustic reply was that he wasn’t yet as philosophical as that but would no doubt learn to be in due course.

Bertin sat on the edge of the bed, silent and gaunt. With a smile he told them what had happened when Lieutenant von Roggstroh made a recommendation on his behalf. Kroysing was only half listening. ‘So that thing is to be promoted to major as well?’ he asked wearily. ‘And there’s nothing we can do about it? Just wait!’ And he clenched his fist. ‘And you, my dear chap, have only got what you deserved. Why are you still hanging around with those lousy ASC men? When will you realise that His Majesty’s sappers need new blood, leadership material, officers? Aren’t you ashamed to stick at that job, sir, as if your being in the ASC was God’s will rather than a temporary measure? No, I’ve no sympathy for you, my dear chap. You could be out of it in five minutes. All you have to do is apply to my esteemed regiment, formerly battalion, in Brandenburg an der Havel, and I’ll take care of the rest. Then you’ll have a lovely spell near Berlin first of all, which, if I’m not mistaken, will please your young wife. You’ll get a nice new tunic and leave as a sergeant. After all, you’ve already been at the front for 12 months.’

‘Fifteen,’ corrected Bertin. ‘If you include the Lille forts.’

‘And the next time we see each other, you’ll be wearing a sword knot like your friend Süßmann… Sergeant Major Bertin, soon Lieutenant Bertin. Have some sense, man! Take stock!’

Bertin listened to him talking, and what the wounded man said now seemed sensible, compelling even. What was he doing among slaves? Wasn’t there a better way to rediscover his humanity? Naturally, Lenore would give up her apartment and join him in Brandenburg for weeks or months, unless she used her father’s influence to get him into a Potsdam regiment… For a few sparkling moments he plunged into such dreams: what a heavenly escape from this endless, unmitigated torment…

Kroysing saw his words had made an impression. ‘Let’s get on with it,’ he cried. ‘Say yes.’

Lieutenant Flachsbauer, in bed by the same wall, watched Bertin’s expression eagerly, entranced by this show, which that old devil Kroysing had pulled out of his sleeve.

‘My dear sir,’ countered Lieutenant Mettner from the bed opposite, ‘don’t let him talk you into anything. Wait until you’ve seen our bandages being changed before you make up your mind.’ And he stretched out the misshapen, bandaged stump of his arm to Bertin with a melancholy smile.

‘Mettner!’ cried Kroysing. ‘Is that what you call camaraderie? Alienating a recruit already three-quarters won over! I wouldn’t have thought you capable of such a thing. It’s unforgivable.’

‘Nonsense,’ countered Mettner phlegmatically. ‘Forgivable or not – if you’re going to play the recruiting sergeant, you should at least offer your victim something to put in his stomach. Or do I misunderstand our candidate’s wishes?’

Bertin conceded with a smile that he was absolutely famished and could certainly go some hospital food. And while, half jokingly, he described the tinned soup called ‘crown prince soup’ that was dished out to the men day after day, Lieutenant Mettner left the room – now just one man among others in his blue and white striped hospital pyjamas.

‘He’s the only one of us who can walk,’ said Kroysing by way of excuse.

Flachsbauer observed with some amusement the contrast between Kroysing’s self-confident gestures and imperious bearing and the humble demeanour of the gaunt ASC man he wanted to seduce into playing the officer.

The one-armed man reappeared at the door with a white bowl and rapped with his foot. Bertin opened it, thanked him and started eating. The soup was made from poor quality beef provided by an elderly war cow past her best when slaughtered; the chewy morsels of her flesh sort of swam in the broth – the delicious broth. And the bright yellow noodles were war-time fare. Not much egg had been used in their manufacture, and their yellow hue came from a colouring agent, probably saffron. But this concoction, liberally seasoned with salt, parsley and leeks, constituted a meal the likes of which Private Bertin had not tasted since his wedding leave and it brought tears to his eyes – tears of shame at the happiness that flooded him, at the humiliation and indignity of being as moved now by beef soup as he once had been by music or poetry, and because he felt he could be a different man if he always ate like this. He sat head bowed, the soup bowl on his knees, his face in shadow, silently spooning the soup into his mouth, and each of the three men watching him noticed how much he was enjoying it and that his dark brown hair, greying at the temples, was going on top. But no one guessed what was going through his mind, or if they did they didn’t show it.

‘I knew,’ said Bertin, laying his spoon down in the bowl and looking up, ‘that I had found the Island of the Blessed here.’

‘But the entrance fee isn’t cheap,’ nodded the rather fat Mettner.

‘Not as dear as yours,’ replied Bertin briskly.

Lieutenant Mettner looked at him. ‘That remains to be seen,’ he said carefully. ‘What’s your line of work?’

‘Lawyer,’ replied Bertin.

‘Don’t be so modest,’ broke in Kroysing. ‘He also writes books.’

‘Good,’ continued Mettner. ‘In me you may admire a mathematician, pupil of Max Klein, Göttingen, and not a bad one either. We have plenty of free time now, and so I tried to solve a cubic equation recently to pass the time. Do you know that I don’t understand them any more. I hardly know what a logarithm is. That’s how far I’ve sunk.’

The others laughed. But Mettner continued undeterred. ‘Consider this, young man: you will probably have sunk even lower than us, and so you’ll have to start again from the beginning. We’re out of practice, our minds are dulled, our judgement is gone and our professional know-how has evaporated. And we’ll have to relearn what civilisation means. Believe me, it’s going to be quite a task. Or do you think you’ll still have respect for human life after everything that’s gone on here? Won’t you just reach for your pistol if your landlord doesn’t want to fix your shutters? I know I’ll at least want to. And when the postman rings in the morning, I know I’ll secretly want to open the door and chuck my water jug in his ugly mug. That’s how I, Hermann Mettner, feel – born in Magdeburg and not the least bit bloodthirsty. But you, my dear legal friend, have spent the last 20 months standing to attention and saying ‘Yessir’ even if the man in front of you is an absolute baffoon. You’ll definitely go to the dogs. Let’s assume the worse that happens is that you’re still in that tunic at the end of the war. When you’re released, you’ll be used to obeying. No matter what you’re asked to do, you won’t complain, and if people ask nice and politely, you’ll melt like butter. You’re sure to find people who’ll save you the trouble of making your own decisions. And once the lovely business of making money starts again, in an office or wherever, one fine day you’ll realise you lost whatever scraps of personality you had in the war and you’ll remember a certain Mettner, who only gave his right arm, and there’ll be much wailing and gnashing of teeth – or worse.’

‘How! I have spoken,’ joked Kroysing, quoting Karl Mays. ‘My dear Mettner, you’re an intelligent man, and we’re sure to hear more from you as the days get longer. And it’s brilliant that you’re trying to put my good friend Bertin off being in the rank and file. But don’t be offended if I take issue with you on certain points, for I’m a military man through and through now, and if I don’t stay in the sappers I’ll do something in the air force. This gentleman here has no right to think about himself and his personality. For now, he should think about Germany. Comrades of his and ours are being killed every day, and sometimes it’s necessary and sometimes it isn’t. If a man is courageous, devoted to duty and able to lead, then God damn it he belongs in His Imperial Majesty’s most prestigious Officer Corps until the peace bells ring out. As to what happens to him afterwards, Germany will take care of that; our country will do things properly. And now, goodnight, gentlemen, and please close your ears for a bit. I have some private matters to discuss with Bertin.’

Flachsbauer and Mettner turned to the wall. Lieutenant Mettner had long since given up trying to influence Kroysing, who was older than him but still such a boy, and he knew that his friend Flachsbauer always agreed with the person who’d spoken last – in this case the old warhorse. Just don’t rush things, he thought, as he snuggled down in his blankets. It was spite on Kroysing’s part, if not something worse, to want to get that bright, left-leaning dreamer with his jam-jar glasses into an officer’s tunic. But they’d cross that bridge when they came to it. Now it was time for sleep. A man always saw things more clearly after a good sleep.

Bertin stared at Mettner’s back. Waking up with that wound must have been like coming round after a drinking bout; he’d have liked to know more about him. He’d been thinking about his Kroysing novel and felt uneasy about it, unsure whether it was good or bad. Perhaps it was bad – and he couldn’t see it. For his two years as a soldier had taken their toll, eroding his education and character… What would become of him? He was suddenly overcome with fear. Don’t think about it, an inner voice cried. Save your soul! If you start to think about it, you won’t do your job properly tomorrow. You’ll drop a dud and blow yourself up. You only have one duty: to stay alive. Eat lots of soup like that one, listen to Lieutenant Mettner and stay true to yourself… Montmédy? Ah yes, Kroysing was asking if there was any news from there. Bertin ran his hand through his hair. He hadn’t heard anything for weeks. The papers Kroysing had sent him via Süßmann had certainly been forwarded and would be there now. But since Judge Advocate Mertens’ fatal accident…

‘It’s always the wrong ones who get it,’ growled Kroysing, lying back, his nose casting a sharp shadow on the barracks wall. ‘Why couldn’t that bloody aerial bomb have blown the heroic Niggl through the roof? No, it had be a decent man and one of the most indispensable.’

Bertin nodded and said nothing. Something made him want to tell Kroysing the wild hunter the truth about that indispensable man’s death, but he let it go out of respect for the deceased. He’d heard nothing further, he lied.

‘Well, I have,’ said Kroysing. ‘His sergeant came to see me, Herr Porisch from Berlin. A queer fish, but well-meaning, no doubt about that. First of all, he made it clear that Herr Merten’s successor would not want to open the dead file. Then he gave me a piece of advice.’

Bertin had instinctively put his pipe in his mouth and was sucking on it. He saw Porisch’s pale, puffy face, brash Sergeant Fürth – Pelican – the billet at Romagne with the crossed sabres. Poor Christoph Kroysing’s affairs were in disarray, and that couldn’t be allowed to go on.

‘Porisch is clever,’ he said.

‘So he is,’ growled Kroysing. ‘He suggested I make a complaint against Niggl to the judge advocate of the Western Group Command, whose jurisdiction we fall under here, Lychow Division, German Field Post and so on – I’ve got it written down. He said I should address it to Judge Advocate Dr Posnanski, confidentially in the first instance, outline the case briefly, cite you as a witness and ask for a meeting between the three of us to discuss the matter, so that I don’t get a reputation as a troublemaker with my unit if the evidence doesn’t conform to the rather exacting standards of the military judiciary.’

Bertin said that seemed like a very sensible suggestion to him. ‘I think so too,’ continued Kroysing, ‘but before I pursue it, my young friend, I must warn you that it could create unpleasantness for you. An ordinary ASC private who picks a fight with a battalion commander is letting himself in for it. I didn’t have your postal address and besides I had to deal with my leg and I learnt patience in the Prussian army. But now that you’re here, I must ask you: are you in?’

‘Certainly,’ replied Bertin without hesitation. ‘I’ll never go back on the promise I made to your brother. And now I must go if you don’t mind. My comrade Pahl is over there in ward 3.’

Kroysing reached out his hand. ‘You’re making off before I can say thank you. Fair enough – I know how it is. I’ll send the letter tomorrow. Where can I find you?’

Bertin, who’d already stood up, described his barracks under the hill near the goods siding at Vilosnes-East – very close on the map, but a good 20-minute climb on the ground. He told him his duties were always finished by dark. ‘And what happens,’ he asked, buttoning up his tunic, ‘if it’s not possible to pursue Herr Niggl in law?’

‘Then I’ll take up the chase alone and hunt him until he drops. As long as we both live, there will be no let-up and no mercy, even if I have to drag him from his orderly room or his bed or some latrine he’s crawled into. A man who kills one Kroysing has to face the other’s pistol or pitchfork, and that’s the end of him. And now go and see your comrade. What’s he called?’

‘Pahl,’ Bertin replied. ‘Wilhelm Pahl. It would be nice if you could look out for him. Goodnight.’

When Bertin had left the room, Lieutenant Mettner turned on to his back. ‘You’ll destroy that young man, my dear Kroysing, if he acts as a witness against a captain.’

‘May I turn out the light?’ asked Kroysing politely in reply.

Mettner smiled, not at all offended. ‘Please do, my dear Kroysing. That lucky fellow Flachsbauer has been asleep for a while.’

^{CHAPTER TWO} Suffering flesh

‘HOW NICE THAT he’s got a visitor,’ said Sister Mariechen, who was on duty in ward 3 – minor cases. And her small blue eyes twinkled amiably as she greeted Bertin. ‘He simply doesn’t want to get better. He seems preoccupied. Tell him it was really nothing. Now hold the fort for me a moment,’ she said, ‘and I’ll get you some nibbles.’ And with a maternal shake of the head, she bustled out of the dismal ward to have a chat with Sister Annchen and Sister Louise in the kitchen.

Fourteen of the 18 beds were occupied, and Pahl’s bed was next to the window. Three electric light bulbs hung over the central passageway. The one furthest away was turned on and shaded by a blue bag. ‘Come and sit next me, my friend,’ said Pahl weakly. ‘They’re all asleep and the old bird’s gone out. We might not get another chance to speak privately.’

Bertin felt moved as he looked at Pahl the typesetter’s strangely alien face as though he’d never seen it before. He looked like one of the executed men in those big depictions of the Deposition from the Cross from the Middle Ages – pallid and extinct. There was a frizz of grey-brown stubble on his cheeks that emphasised his stubborn brow, squashed nose and remarkably bright eyes. The thin moustache above his lips repeated his eyebrows and underlined the set of his mouth. He’d pulled his blanket up round his chin, such that his short neck was hidden from view and all that remained of his familiar form was a face etched with pain.

‘Everything’s fine here,’ said Pahl. ‘The people have been quite decent so far, and the food is edible. But I absolutely cannot get over what they did to me, nor will I until the day I die.’

Bertin shook his head sympathetically. Wilhelm Pahl really wasn’t the man he’d been. What had happened? Exactly what had happened to nearly all the ‘minor cases’ over the past year: slish-slash, the doctor had chopped off his big toe – it was high time, he’d said. The blood poisoning had already spread to the middle of his foot. They’d laid Pahl on a scrubbed table, tied him and held him down, and then operated. ‘I was fully awake, my friend, completely conscious. They showed no mercy or compassion.’ To the contrary. The medical officer had yelled at Pahl the typesetter for kicking up a fuss over such a trifle and had told him he’d be lucky to get off that lightly, since his leg was swollen and discoloured below the knee and if they had to take more off there wouldn’t be any chloroform for that either. Happily, the first intervention was enough. But – and the medical officer could not get over this – Pahl was not getting better. He took an iron hold of himself when the bandages were being changed, ground his teeth and didn’t say a word, but his whole body trembled and he nearly passed out. Some kind of inner turmoil was how Dr Münnich, the medical captain, explained his unusual condition to his assistants and the more intelligent orderlies and nurses when the word ‘malingering’ was mentioned. A psychic trauma, he called it, for which the ground had obviously been laid by childhood experiences connected with his deformity. But for his recovery to make better progress he would have to regain his lust for life and direct his will, which clearly had not dissociated itself from the experience of pain, forwards.

‘Boy,’ said Pahl, ‘it’s unbelievable that there are such things in the world, that people can inflict so much pain on you, that the pain can go right through you to your heart and brain and back again… It doesn’t really fit with the world of blue skies and bogus sunshine and birds singing to order that we’ve all been sold. But it fits with a society that’s harder than hard. It fits with the situation of the oppressed classes. With how a man can be condemned from birth to toil and go without, even if he has great gifts that could benefit humanity…’ He stopped talking and closed his eyes. ‘The slaughterhouse,’ he said shaking his head, ‘is always there, it’s just that now in war time we see it everywhere. We’re conceived for the slaughterhouse, brought up to it and trained for it, and we work for it, and then eventually we die in it. And that’s what’s called life.’ His breathing grew heavy, and he put his waxen hands on the bed cover. Bertin instinctively looked for the red lacerations from the nails. A couple of tears seeped out from under Pahl’s right eyelid. My God, thought Bertin, and I had tears in my eyes earlier over a bowl of soup. ‘We must stop supplying the slaughterhouse,’ Pahl continued in a low voice, while around him the others snored, ‘starting with the one we can see all around us.’

‘So far as that’s in our power,’ agreed Bertin cautiously.

‘It’s in our power alone. Only the victims of injustice can stop injustice. Only the oppressed can put an end to oppression. Only men who’ve been shelled can bring the shell factories to a standstill. Why would those who profit from the torment want to abolish it? No reason.’

Bertin was glad to be able to distract Pahl from his sorrows by contradicting him. A sensible man would willingly give up one-third of his power in order to be able to enjoy the remaining two-thirds in peace, he said. But Pahl said no. That had never happened. Everyone preferred to grasp hold of three thirds and be killed for it. And so the proletariat would be forced into a reckoning with the capitalist class.

Pain hardens you, Bertin thought. Aloud, he said there were some very decent capitalists.

And in a whisper Pahl rejected this objection. First the world had to be rid of collective injustice. ‘If you had a finger hacked off, you’d spend your whole life wanting to abolish finger hacking. It’s good to get this all off my chest. This place is full of butchers and pious old women, and the patients only think about next lunchtime’s soup and whether the nurses are sleeping with the doctors or officers. Sometimes it drives me nuts. The ruling class certainly has finished us off.’

Bertin stole a glance at his watch. Pahl noticed and said he should go: duty required sleep. ‘That game old bird will be back in a minute, so we’d better decide quickly what we’re going to do.’ Would Bertin allow himself to be requested if Pahl could get him a job somewhere when he’d recovered and was back at work? He’d be able to work his way up from typesetter to copy editor, and it was a secure job as no administration could afford to ignore newspapers, whose job it was to titivate the national mood morning, noon and night.

Bertin looked away. This tormented man was so sure of his cause and so convinced he’d be able to spirit Bertin away. Bertin asked if he hadn’t perhaps underestimated the difficulties.

‘No,’ said Pahl impatiently. ‘And once you’re in Berlin, perhaps you’ll come and talk to a works gathering or a members’ meeting. And then maybe you’ll write me up a few leaflets that’ll get the ammunitions factory workers thinking. Agreed?’

Bertin looked into the drawn, waxen face of Pahl the typesetter, now more than ever a cripple and resolved to resist evil. For a moment he bridled inside and wondered why they were all drawn to him: Kroysing from the right, Pahl from the left. Why did no one leave him in peace to listen to his own inner voice? He suddenly clenched his fist and thought, Let me come to myself!

But Pahl misunderstood the gesture. ‘Good,’ he whispered. ‘Bravo!’

Sister Mariechen came up behind them, and Bertin stood up. ‘See if you can fix it, Wilhelm,’ he said with a smile.

‘Come again soon,’ said Pahl with a similar sort of smile.

And Bertin thought how much better he looked when he was smiling. The nurse waved a little package at him: a ham sandwich as a thank you, she explained.

‘No one could resist that,’ said Bertin. ‘I’ll eat it on my way down.’

‘Reward for your good deed,’ said Pahl.

^{CHAPTER THREE} Man and justice

THE STAFF OF the ‘West of the Meuse’ Army Group were each week reduced to despair by the breadth of Judge Advocate Dr Posnanski’s knowledge and his propensity to share it. How were they to know that their billet of Montfaucon had provided the poet Heinrich Heine with an opportunity to lampoon his colleagues Fouqué, Uhland and Tieck in ‘Mistress Joanna of Montfaucon’? Posnanski, in his graciousness, didn’t expect that others might be educated in these matters too, but no one likes to be made to look like an ignorant boor, and less tolerant men than Lieutenant Winfried, the general’s ADC, found the judge advocate’s blethering rather offensive. ‘I’ve got nothing against Jews,’ Brigadier-General von Hesta (whose family had migrated from the Hungarian to the Prussian service in 1835) growled on one occasion. ‘Nothing at all, so long as they knuckle down and keep their gobs shut. But when they worry away at this book stuff like a dog in a sandpit – out with them.’ Should Dr Posnanski learn of such remarks, the corners of his mouth, much wider apart than those of most men, would twitch, he’d close one of his eyes, look heavenwards with the other and drily note: ‘That’s what comes of letting newcomers into the ways of the Mark. Let them play the Prussian as long as the likes of us have. They weren’t there at Fehrbellin, they fought on the other side from Mollwitz to Torgau, and I didn’t see them at Waterloo either – and that little chicklet wants to say his piece.’ Indeed, his friends admired in him a certain philosophical calm, which came from an understanding of how slowly civilisation progresses and that people absorb that progress at a snail’s pace. ‘If I thought life under our changing moon would always remain as it is now, I’d breakfast on rat poison tomorrow and greet you in the evening from the fourth dimension.’

He said this one morning to Lieutenant Winfried. They were sitting in the cellar dugout of the Mairie in the village of Esnes, both on urgent business. It was to do with the relief of the division – a weighty matter. As Hill 304 and Mort Homme could testify, the Lychow Army Group had done its duty, and when it returned to the Russian front that had been its home since the start of the war, as it was about to do, it would be able to inscribe certain names from the Battle of the Somme in its group register. While in France, it had bored a couple of tunnels in the rock – the Raven, Gallwitz, Bismarck and Lychow tunnels – and it would be leaving the ‘West of the Meuse’ sector in excellent condition. For as everyone knew, from the infantry to the general staff, who were inclined to make up their own minds about army commanders, General von Lychow asked a lot of his men but nothing unnecessary. Yes, Old Lychow still enjoyed the confidence of the men. And when the French took the left bank of the Meuse in August 1917, and those tunnels were full of dead Germans, a number of the officers around the crown prince expressed the view that it wouldn’t have happened under Lychow…

The two men were occupied with completely different matters. While Lieutenant Winfried was to inform His Excellency of conditions in the sector that was to be evacuated next, Posnanski was to investigate a break-in at the provision stores in Esnes; responsibility for it was being passed back and forth among units, and no one wanted to admit it was them. ‘From the point of view of who’s hungry, it was all of them,’ said Posnanski earnestly, ‘but the main culprit was probably the name of the place. Because although that’s not how the French say it, our men pronounce it “Essen”. And having said the German word for food, they want to have some.’

‘Posnanski,’ groaned Winfried, ‘have you no sympathy?’

‘I do indeed. For example with my clerk Adler who’s quaking with fear in case he is sent to be medically re-evaluated for active service.’

‘Is he going to be re-evaluated? God help him.’

Posnanski’s bald, knobbly head bobbed in concern: ‘It’s a shame because he was a good lawyer and it’s a double shame because he had training. I suppose I’ll have to find another one.’

‘There’s plenty of choice,’ said Lieutenant Winfried. He was studying the battle history of a particular battalion whose commander was to be put in charge of the rear guard.

‘Less than people think. I require certain moral aptitudes, and they don’t grow on trees.’

‘Seek and ye shall find,’ murmured the ADC, trying to decipher some reports written in half rubbed-out pencil: 12-18.XII.16, extremely critical days…

‘I hope you know how the quotation continues,’ said Posnanski, getting ready to go.

‘How?’ said Winfried, his pale eyes meeting the dark grey ones of his stout friend.

‘Knock and it shall be opened unto you.’

Winfried laughed. ‘Right. Have a private word with Sergeant-Major Pont. I’ll be in reserve.’

‘Thanks,’ said Posnanski cheerfully. ‘And as you’re in such a giving mood, when can I have the car for a little official trip? I’m hearing strange noises from the Dannevoux field hospital.’

‘Laurenz Pont is the man for that.’

‘Good afternoon, then,’ said Posnanski expansively.

As he climbed the narrow staircase, moving slowly in the gloom because of his extreme myopia and astigmatism, he steeled himself for the distressing interview to come. Waiting upstairs was his clerk Adler, once a barrister at the High Court in Berlin… he quickly pushed the thought aside. Odd how things happened in pairs. He’d had two enquiries from the same field hospital on two successive days. First, the medical officer wanted to complain about the shoes issued to a particular ASC private and asked how best he might do this; secondly, a wounded lieutenant asked for a interview regarding a serious miscarriage of justice committed against his younger brother, killed in action. As he grasped the handrail then make his way across the rubble-strewn courtyard, Posnanski marvelled at people’s inextinguishable need for justice. In the middle of a war, when civilisation had long since broken down and was about as dilapidated as that Mairie over there, people still railed, in defiance of the gross injustice all around, against incidents that might have screamed unfairness to the heavens in peacetime but now counted as little more than minor irregularities. And it was good that they did so. For that unswerving compulsion provided the only means of bridging the abyss of the war years and creating a world worth living in.

‘Good afternoon, Herr Adler,’ said Posnanski.

Judge Advocate Posnanski’s uniform had a high collar, purple tabs, officer’s epaulettes and a dagger. His tunic strained almost as tightly round his stomach as did Colonel Stein’s, and he wore the same leather puttees round his calves. For these reasons, Bertin stood to attention in his presence, which rather turned Dr Posnanski against him.

The medical officer, Dr Münnich, a man in his fifties with bristling grey hair and grey eyes, had cut his interview short by producing the shoes in which Private Pahl had been admitted to hospital: a hole in the middle of the left sole and the tip of the right one as good as gone. Dr Münnich had a tendency to flush, which made his duelling scars stand out. He spoke in a very controlled way but liked to tear the objects of his wrath up by the roots – which, as can be imagined, had made him a difficult but respected colleague in Liegnitz in Silesia in peacetime and wherever his division was stationed in wartime. He explained that he considered it unnecessary to increase the hospital population in this way and considered a battalion commander who allowed this to happen unnecessary and would like to make that clear to the gentleman. However, the division in question came under the ‘other bank’ – headquarters in Damvillers. How to bridge that gulf?

Dr Posnanski smiled thinly. There had been tensions between the Eastern and Western Groups since His Excellency von Lychow had stated that no captain under the command of the General Staff should have risked confining the attack to the right bank, even if experienced corps commanders had said that their Brandenburgers could manage it on their lonesome. This tart criticism, uttered on the evening of Pierrepont, had been instantly conveyed, as is customary among comrades, to the commander of the Eastern Group. He had merely sniffed contemptuously and asked what an Eastern front bunny rabbit like Lychow was meant to know about operations in France. Since then the two officers had been rather off with each other, had avoided meeting and enjoyed putting little difficulties in each other’s way. Dr Posnanski was generally considered to be a peaceable man, but he understood how power worked. If His Excellency Lychow happened to be in a good mood, then it would be easy to free his clerk Adler from the clutches of the murder commission. He’d just have to be transferred to a fighting regiment, the radio operators or telegraphists. If that happened straight away and with his Excellency’s blessing, then none of his well-meaning colleagues would have time to denounce him. If Posnanski introduced these boots in a joking way, they might amuse the great man, who could then forward them to the proud gentleman on the right bank with an appropriate dedication. And so Posnanski had the offending objects wrapped up and told the doctor he’d see to them. That done, he asked for somewhere to have a conversation with Lieutenant Kroysing undisturbed.

Undisturbed would be difficult, explained the medical officer. Every corner of his barracks was in use. But then something occurred to him. One of his nurses, the most able as it happened, had asked for a room to herself when she joined them – just a little corner with a window and a bed, so that she could be by herself from time to time. And as she was actually a colonel’s wife and therefore enjoyed a certain influence, they had cleared out a room for her that the hospital orderlies kept their buckets and brooms in. A window was cut in the barracks wall, and Sister Kläre had gladly taken up residence. ‘She’s one of the quiet, warm-hearted ones, who’s been through a lot herself and therefore understands what other people need,’ explained Dr Münnich. As they were busy and it was all hands on deck, the small room would definitely be free. Luckily, the cold snap had broken a few days ago, as well it might have given the time of year, so the gentlemen wouldn’t freeze – there was of course no stove in the room.

Sister Kläre wasn’t exactly overjoyed when asked for her room. But she nodded, went in first and turned a picture to the wall that was hanging above the bed. The crucifix at the head of the bed stayed where it was. The patient Kroysing could lie down. One of the gentleman could sit beside him, and the other would have to stand. The other, naturally, was Bertin, who had been phoned for in plenty of time and had just arrived from work, dog tired and still starving. But he was so intimidated by the presence of this high-ranking officer called Judge Advocate Posnanski that he initially said nothing at all, only stuttering out a shy request for bread and to be allowed to sit down. This too made a bad impression on Posnanski. This man who was of the same religion as him was lazy and greedy as a pig. He was a pathetic sight sitting there on the floor with his legs stretched out in front of him, shamelessly shovelling soup out of a large bowl and crumbling bread into it, all the while preventing more civilised people from smoking and getting comfortable. With his sticky-out ears and damaged front teeth, he was hardly an adornment to the Prussian army. Furthermore, in his excitement over this decisive meeting, Kroysing had laid so much weight on Bertin’s testimony when introducing him (‘…and this is my friend Bertin, who spoke to my brother the day before he died and will tell you what he learnt from him…’) that Dr Posnanski, never much good at remembering names, had completely failed to note this one. Lieutenant Kroysing, whom Posnanski had liked at once, began to speak, and the lawyer listened. The room was as white and narrow as a ship’s cabin, and as soon as the witness laid down his spoon it was also equally smoky. For Posnanski had put his cigar case on Sister Kläre’s bedside table for people to help themselves. Kroysing’s deep voice vibrated through the clouds of tobacco smoke. Posnanski asked questions, and Bertin listened. This was the story of Sergeant Kroysing and his brother, Lieutenant Kroysing, who had done battle with that dwarf Niggl in the dripstone caves and hideouts of Douaumont mountain, only to have the pesky little gremlin snatched away from him by the French attack, overhasty orders and thick fog. And now Bertin was smoking a stogie such as he hadn’t enjoyed since his wedding, and that wedding seemed to belong to another world beyond the River Acheron, the world of the living where his sweet and lovely wife was getting thinner and thinner because even gods and goddesses starved in those iron-hard times. How did those verses go that he’d read at university from the ancient Norse Edda about doom fulfilled? ‘I was snowed on with snow, and smitten with rain, And drenched with dew; long was I dead.’ Did that apply to Christoph Kroysing, Sergeant Süßmann or Paul Schanz? In any case, there he was squatting like a beggar on the floorboards of a strange woman’s bedroom, ready to fall asleep… The weariness of spring, the waxing moon, and the goods train on the siding at Vilosnes-East station growing longer…

‘Hm,’ grumbled Posnanski. ‘Our witness is asleep.’ Bertin really had sunk forward, arms round his knees supporting his head.

‘Please don’t wake him yet,’ said Kroysing. ‘He hasn’t got much to laugh about.’ And he quickly explained how and where he’d met Bertin, about the work he had to do, the injustices he’d suffered and his visits to Kroysing. It was a mean sort of life for a lawyer and a writer; no one liked to fall outside their caste.

At the words ‘lawyer and writer’ Posnanski pricked up his ears like a startled hare. ‘Bertin?’ he repeated incredulously, almost in disgust. ‘Werner Bertin?’

‘Hush!’ whispered Kroysing, but the sleeping man had started up at the sound of his name as if he’d been kicked. ‘Yessir, Sergeant,’ he said, and then opening his eyes: ‘Oh, please excuse me… We were hauling wet crates of powder on our backs. There are still clumps of earth on my boots.’

Posnanski was still looking at him in shock. ‘Did you write the Man called Hilner?’

‘How come you know it? It was banned.’

‘And Love at Last Sight?’

‘Well, what do you know!’ said Bertin, suddenly cheering up.

‘And The Chessboard: Twelve Stories?’

‘The judge advocate is the first person I’ve ever met who’s read that book.’

Posnanski nodded. ‘Lawyers, stockbrokers and ladies: they read everything, you know.’

Bertin laughed happily and said he’d thought the reading public was mainly school children and students. If that were the case, writers would starve, said Posnanski, and that must be avoided at all costs. ‘And now, my dear colleague, I’d like to hear your report. What happened to Sergeant Kroysing and what do you know about him?’

When Bertin had finished silence hung in the room as heavily as the smoke. ‘Don’t get your hopes up,’ said Posnanski. ‘As a private individual I believe you and Herr Bertin implicitly. As a lawyer and judge, unfortunately I must alight on the flaw – if I may mix my metaphors – that the witness can only state what he heard from your brother, but who can prove that your brother described the situation accurately? That he didn’t embellish and see enemies who wanted to persecute him in a perfectly standard military order? Had Herr Niggl signed a confession but then convinced the court that you had forced him to sign in fear of his life, then we could have countered that objection and supported your brother’s subjective view with Herr Bertin’s testimony and statements from the Third Company, and thereby proved what we are convinced is true. Think about it,’ and he rose, agitated, and stomped the four paces from the window to the door and back again, hands behind his back, his bald pate thrust forwards. ‘We’re up against it. We have the truth, and it’s believable and convincing. You both strike me as entirely reliable witnesses who have described the incident accurately, and God knows the incident itself is as clear as Pythagoras’ theorem. But to prove what you say to a reluctant court of the accused’s officers and peers: that’s another matter entirely.’

Kroysing sat up in bed, letting his bandaged leg hang down, which he was not supposed to do. ‘So is the whole business going to come to nothing? Bloody hell!’ he almost spat. ‘What’s the point of society supporting lawyers, then?’

Posnanski leapt to his profession’s defence. ‘It’s definitely worth society’s while supporting lawyers and supporting them – as you insinuate – rather comfortably. But let’s not fight, Lieutenant. Let’s try to work this through because compromise is the best lawyer. Give me the file from the preliminary enquiry. I’ll send for the papers and look into the case. In the meantime, think about whether you want to bring a complaint against Niggl and his accomplices for abuse of military authority resulting in a man’s death. Eat well, sleep well, get well and recover your spirits, and then write and tell me your decision. If you want to fight for justice, then do so, and I’ll help you and so will this young gentleman, though he will be taking the biggest risk of all of us. But it won’t be an easy battle. If you cannot prove your case, you’ll be in a terrible position and the stain of it will stay with you for the rest of your life. Right, now get me the file.’

Kroysing raised himself up, his good foot in a slipper, his wounded leg bandaged up to the knee, his torso slung between the crutches from the padded supports under his armpits (to Bertin, it was a pitiful sight – Eberhard Kroysing on crutches!) and left the room.

‘Now as regards yourself,’ said Posnanski in a businesslike tone. ‘You obviously can’t stay where you are. Are you fit for active service?’

‘No, I was declared unfit long ago on account of my eyes and my heart,’ said Bertin.

‘Good. I’m having to give up my clerk. I shall ask for you.’

Bertin sat there wide-eyed in his overcoat and scarf, his worn cap beside him. ‘But,’ he stuttered, ‘my training, my situation… I struggled to understand your exposition of the case earlier.’

‘My good man,’ cried Posnanski, ‘say yes and be quick about it. You don’t get a chance like this every day. Can you type? No. You’ll learn in two weeks. Give me your unit’s address. And then this evening won’t have been a complete waste of time.’

And as Bertin was still staring at him in confusion – could something so incredible happen so easily? (He’s been driven demented, thought Posnanski compassionately) – he added: ‘But please don’t mention this to anyone or it’ll go wrong, as we superstitious types know. How much leave do you get at the moment?’

‘Four days,’ replied Bertin, touching the floor. Still made of deal floorboards, so he wasn’t dreaming. ‘As a thank you, sir,’ he said falteringly, ‘may I offer you a report about my meeting with young Kroysing? It’s actually written as novel,’ he added almost guiltily. ‘That’s to say, it’s going to be a novel – the only thing I’ve written since I’ve been a soldier. If you would like to keep these few pages here..’

Posnanski extended a grateful hand. ‘I won’t keep it. No gifts, my dear man. But I’ll definitely read it.’

^{CHAPTER FOUR} Sister Kläre

THERE WAS A knock. Sister Kläre appeared in front of Kroysing, but recoiled in mock horror, crying in Russian, ‘My God’ (Bozhe moy), then asked in her Rhenish accent if there was actually anyone there as it was impossible to see. She yanked the window open and flung the tarboard shutters wide.

‘Turn the light out, toad face, if you want to see the view,’ growled a deep, angry voice. And Kroysing turned the switch.

‘You’re not in Douaumont now,’ said Sister Kläre sharply. ‘The French airmen have got better things to do than to mess about here.’

‘If only she weren’t so pretty,’ said Kroysing apologetically to the others.

The landscape beyond the small window was bathed in the soft glow of twilight. From the ridge, the hospital overlooked the valley, which was shrouded in the spring night: the half-risen moon, mysterious stars glittering in the haze and the winding Meuse, glowing faintly between its dark sloping banks with their flecks of light. Only a faint flicker and rumble betrayed the existence of the front. The four of them crowded round the window and hungrily breathed in the pure air of approaching spring. The Meuse was still spectacularly frozen, but the warm breeze was unmistakably from the south. Sister Kläre folded her hands. ‘If only people weren’t so insane,’ she sighed. ‘I always have to remind myself that it’s not the Mosel, somewhere behind Trier. Why can’t the enemy just give in? Then we’d all be home by Easter and we could start to forget the war.’

‘Better not,’ said Bertin, then seeing Sister Kläre’s wide eyes: ‘Forget, I mean. People forget much too quickly.’ He stopped talking, realising he wouldn’t find the right words.

‘No, no,’ joked Posnanski, ‘we won’t forget this one. We’ll dress it up in patriotic colours and nice little rosy cheeks for future generations.’

‘I’ll be interested to see how you’re going to manage that,’ blinked Kroysing. ‘But beforehand, let me share my humble experiences with you. In the spring of 1915, on the Flanders front, we were facing the British and were pretty close to them when we installed our gas canisters – we had the honour of being the first gas company. From February to April we slept cosied up to those large iron canisters. One time one of them leaked, and I saw the damage in the morning in the shape of 45 sappers, dead and blue. And when we did a test explosion with the bloody things on the drill ground and carried the pieces home, every man who’d touched them entered the hereafter too. They died slowly. When I was in the hospital at Jülich with my first wound I met some of them. They died off, and no one really knew why. The doctors were very upset about it, but, hey ho, they still died. End of the line, alight here. Anyway, there we were waiting in our waterlogged trenches for a favourable wind. We kept having to relocate the canisters because they kept getting stuck in the clay. There were no gas masks back then. We were supposed to protect ourselves from the bloody stuff by shoving cotton wool in our noses. The Tommies kept throwing over cheery little notes, asking if the big stink was ever going to start. They were bursting with curiosity, they wrote. And then finally an east wind came, and we blew our gas over and the Tommies were curious no more. Their trenches were full of blue-black corpses when we walked through them. Blue and black, Tommies and Frenchmen, lying peacefully side by side. There were at least 5,000 dead on the Poelkapelle cycle track, and the lucky ones, who’d only got a bit of the stuff and were still choking and spitting, they expired in Jülich, without ceremony, slowly, one by one. Well, it was an unpleasant episode, best buried as quickly as possible. We’ll revisit it next time, when the only ammunition will be gas.’

‘You’re horrible, Kroysing,’ said Sister Kläre. ‘You always have to spoil everything. Haven’t I got enough on my plate looking after your filthy wounds? Can’t I spend five minutes soothing my soul with God’s creation without one of you butting in? The next war! There won’t be another war! If anyone threatens to go to war again after this massacre, our womenfolk will beat them to death with their brooms.’

‘Let’s hope so, sister,’ said Posnanski with conviction.

‘There won’t be another war,’ said Bertin, nodding. ‘This is the last one. Our rulers can fight the next one on their own. We men won’t be there.’

‘Quite right!’ cried Sister Kläre, wiping away a tear with the back of her index finger. She had been thinking of her husband, Colonel Schwersenz, a once proficient staff officer who had been sinking ever deeper into depression since the winter of 1914 and was now being cared for by her mother, the elderly Frau Pidderit, in a small hunting lodge in Hinterstein valley in the Bavarian Allgäu. Only the medical officer knew Sister Kläre’s story and real name. She was generally thought to be the plucky wife of a captain somewhere on the Eastern front, and there were whispered rumours about a flirtation with a very high-ranking personage.

Kroysing, towering above them all, his mouth set in a sarcastic line, shrugged his shoulders: ‘Then we have the honour of living through the funeral of the last war. It didn’t really have a very long career, war – a mere 5,000 years. It was born in the time of the Assyrians and ancient Egyptians, and we’re putting it in its coffin. The world has been waiting for us. The people who ran the Thirty Years’ War, the Seven Years’ War and the Napoleonic Wars didn’t know what they were doing. We folks from the 1914 war are the ones to sort it out – we of all people.’

‘That’s right,’ said Sister Kläre and Bertin in defiant unison. However, Bertin couldn’t help but see a grave and them all as grave diggers standing round it, spades in hand: Kroysing, the nurse, the fat judge advocate, and he himself, outlined against the cloudy sky, hacking at clods of earth. Below them bulged a bloated belly and a plump, hairless face with a grin across its chubby cheeks beneath its closed eyes – perhaps portentous, perhaps a sign of contentment at its own demise.

Meanwhile, Sister Kläre closed first the shutters then the window. ‘Now put the light on and then you can go,’ she said.

They all blinked as the light bounced off the walls. ‘We’d all like to thank you for your kind hospitality,’ said Judge Advocate Posnanski, bowing over Sister Kläre’s long, strong hand, calloused by work. A strand of ash blonde hair escaped from her nun-like head covering. Beneath it shone her beautifully set eyes. Her alluring, tender lips were obdurately closed. Hell of a lovely little thing with her Madonna face and pert lips, thought Kroysing. Very likely she did have a thing with the crown prince. He felt the need to improve his standing with her. ‘What would I get, sister—’

‘You’d get nothing,’ she interrupted, eyes flashing. ‘You’d get a punch on the nose.’

‘—if I dished up something extra nice for you? Allow me to introduce you to my friend Werner Bertin…’ – Sister Kläre stopped in the middle of the room, her lips slightly parted and her hands outstretched as if to push him away – ‘… author of the much-read novel Love at Last Sight.’

Sister Kläre’s trained eyes took in Bertin’s grey-brown face, drawn cheeks, bristly chin, the rim of slack, dirty skin above his worn and muddy lice-infested collar. When he laughed in embarrassment, she saw he had a gap in his teeth and a broken front tooth and that he was going bald on top. And yet there was something about his eyebrows, his forehead, his hands, which suggested that Kroysing wasn’t joking. This man had written that tender love story! ‘It’s you,’ she said quietly, offering him her hand. ‘I can’t believe it. And my friend Annemarie in Krefeld wrote to me three months ago to say that she had met the author and he was a Hussar lieutenant and a charming man.’

Bertin laughed in disgust at this, and Posnanski and Kroysing laughed at his disgust, and they all left Sister Kläre’s nun’s cell like a cheerful party breaking up. Now she could sleep in the room again, she said, adding that Bertin should visit her the next day when she would be off duty.

‘Well be in touch,’ said Posnanski, bringing the memorable meeting to a close.

^{CHAPTER FIVE} Counterproposal

THE BLACKBIRDS WERE singing as Judge Advocate Posnanski got out of his car at Montfaucon castle. After some thought, he had decided to let the package with Private Pahl’s shoes in it disappear without trace so as not to complicate his request for Private Bertin to be transferred to the Lychow division court martial of the Eastern Group. But he could have spared himself these reflections. Sometimes documents such as his request took weeks to arrive, other times only days. This one was passed very quickly from the Western to the Eastern Group, where it was eyed suspiciously in the ADC’s office and a query scrawled across it in blue pencil: was ASC battalion X/20 in a position to give up any of its men? That meant: kindly say that you are not in a position to do so. As well as the usual hostilities, the transfer of the Lychow division to the Russian front played a decisive role in this. The rivalry between the fronts was gathering momentum. The new Supreme Command had not been able to change this, and the two staffs rejoiced – General Schieffenzahn’s word – only in each other’s setbacks.

When the imposing folio sheet with the teal and violet seals of the two quarrelling army groups was placed in front of Major Jansch, he first removed a yellow sweet from his mouth and stuck it to the edge of a saucer on his right. When he realised that behind the polite, typewritten text lay an attempt to wrest one of his men from him, and furthermore this particular man, he gave a hiss of fury that made his clerk Diehl’s blood run cold. However, the blue-pencilled query, whose meaning Jansch immediately divined, calmed him down. ‘Take this down,’ he said to Diehl, standing up and striding round the room with his hands behind his back as Bonaparte was said to have done. Eventually, after many improvements and deletions, he dictated the following text: ‘Returned to sender with the following remarks: the battalion’s First Company occupies the area between Mureaux-Ferme and Vilsones-East, and its working parties large and small are scattered across it. The company is so weakened by casualties and illness that it cannot countenance the departure of a single healthy man fit for work if there is no replacement. The battalion proposes that Private Pahl, currently in Dannevoux field hospital, should, when recovered, be detailed for the required duty at the court martial. P., a typesetter by trade and exceptionally able, knows how to use a typewriter and is unfit for anything but office work due to the loss of a toe.’ He felt the distinguished gentlemen had miscalculated.

The clerk Diehl left the major’s room and descended the stone steps to the orderly room. As far as he was concerned, his most important duty was to get through his servile existence under that sweet-guzzling old whinger until peace came and return to his wife and child in Hamburg come what may. He felt a lot of comradely sympathy for Private Bertin and wished him well. Anything would have suited Bertin better than collecting duds with Sergeant Barkopp, and now he was going to be done out of a good opportunity in that smooth, hypocritical way that powerful men’s protégés could be pushed aside by those who were protected by equally powerful men. Diehl stopped at the landing window halfway down the stairs, looked at the court martial’s application, which he’d been the first to read that morning, and carried on out into the pale spring light gilding the streets and roofs of Damvillers. He knew nothing of the war between the two army groups, and the Eastern Group’s request seemed reasonable to him, though he spotted the guile in Jansch’s reply. It couldn’t be helped, he decided, walking on: once jinxed, always jinxed, poor lad. Even a blind man could see that he’d pulled some strings to get this transfer. It he found out quickly enough that it had been refused, then he could perhaps – perhaps – think of a way round it, though Diehl couldn’t think what that way might be. He was a primary school teacher, a man with a great deal of respect for books and writers of books, and he felt he should try to help. As he rang the doorbell and stepped into the overheated orderly room, which smelt of men and tobacco, he decided what to do. He opened the typewriter. But before slipping the folio page of the Western Group’s court martial through the roller, he laid a sheet of blue copy paper and a thin sheet of carbon paper beneath it, as was normal practice. If someone sent the carbon to Bertin at lunchtime, he would know what to expect. The typewriter tapped, tinkled and tapped again. The folio sheet was taken out and slipped into the file for signature and the thin carbon copy was placed in a drawer. Everything was going like clockwork. Diehl didn’t even notice that he was breathing more heavily than normal.

In the meantime, Major Jansch telephoned his friend Niggl. Yes, they had become friends. They had eradicated the Main frontier, and Prussia and Bavaria had risen as one empire, dedicated to the overthrow of its malign adversaries. Every morning, they congratulated each other on the recently sunk merchant tonnage and thought they heard the edifice of the British Empire cracking within its boundaries. Every morning, they agreed that French discipline was weakening, the Italian attacks were making them a laughing stock and one could only shrug at the Americans’ big talk. The Russians were on their knees and would soon vanish from the map of Europe: the revolution had finished them off. No danger of bumping into them again in the Balkans or the Near East. Victory was finally within Germany’s grasp. When the concentrated might of the German army was unleashed on the Western front and that of the Austro-Hungarians on the southern front, that would be it – and then it would be the turn of those who pulled the strings behind the scenes: Free Masons and speculators, Jesuits, socialists and Jews.

Niggl listened to his clever friend with profound admiration. He was quite right, said Niggl. You couldn’t argue with a word of what he said. And there would be a remedy that got rid of the Free Masons and Jews just as there was for everything else.

Yes, replied Herr Jansch, sounding both triumphant and concerned, but it would require quite a bit of work, because they were as thick as thieves and if you wanted to see what they could do you need look no further than the fiery warning of the Russian revolution. Jewish bankers had vowed to bring down Tsarism at the behest of the Alliance Israélite and had armed the Japanese against the mighty Russian empire 10 years previously. That time they’d failed, but they didn’t mean to fail this time.

So, asked Niggl naïvely, had Germany been doing the Jews’ work against Russia?

Major Jansch, for a moment nonplussed, said you couldn’t exactly say that. The situation did indeed shed a bright light on just how devilishly clever the Jews were, but also on their basic stupidity, because in the Germans they had finally found a superior adversary, who saw through them and would make sure they were cheated of their profits this time. That very day, he, Jansch, had, not without difficulty, repelled a Jewish attack. Some Jew, a scandal in itself, was judge advocate for Group West. No sooner had he found a little Jewish writer within the ASC than he had wanted to pick him out, probably at the expense of a decent German, and the unsuspecting army commander had given his blessing to this scheme. Jansch was vigilant, however, and Bertin, the author in question, would be blue in the face before he’d be allowed to skive off useful work and loaf about. It was the same man who’d already put on a little show for them, as his friend Niggl might remember. That time he’d wanted to go on leave; now he was trying another ruse.

At the other end of the line, Captain Niggl, soon to be Major Niggl, cleared his throat, stuttered something in reply, and asked to be excused for a moment as someone had just come in with a question. The combination of ‘Bertin’ and ‘court martial’ had momentarily taken his breath away. All too clearly did he see again the dreadful vaults of Douaumont, the gaunt figure of the dastardly Kroysing, who unfortunately hadn’t been killed but was lying in a field hospital with a harmless leg wound. Damn him, damn him, he thought. By the Holy Crucifix, may he never rise again, the miserable dog. He would donate a candle as big as his arm to the Ettal monastery or the Pilgrimage Church in Alt-Ötting if Kroysing and all his cronies came to horrible end. Then he picked up the receiver again and said he couldn’t wait to hear how his comrade had sorted the Jew out.

Moving his yellow sweet over to his left cheek, Herr Jansch described with a giggle the replacement he had generously offered – a decent man who’d been wounded, a Christian typesetter. In any case, it was well known that His Excellency Lychow was moving back to the east again. In a fortnight, or even 10 days, it would all be over.

^{CHAPTER SIX} Night-time reading

JUDGE ADVOCATE POSNANSKI received the Kroysing files from the Montmédy court martial and ASC battalion X/20’s negative decision on the same morning via the staff records office. Every man in Montfaucon who came into contact with that piece of paper had a laugh at it. Sergeant Major Pont laughed at it as he put it in the judge advocate’s in-tray, and the judge advocate himself laughed, as did his clerk Sergeant Adler, despite the pressure he was under. Even the orderly, Gieseken from the Landsturm, burst out laughing when he saw the document, observing: ‘Whoever wrote this is some man. We’ve got a hard neck here in the Prussian army – and that’s for sure.’

The only man who didn’t laugh but was furious was Colonel Winfried, Excellency Lychow’s ADC and nephew. He was angry at the lack of respect for his uncle, at the sheer insolence of the ASC major on the other bank and above all that the refusal would have to stand. ‘If Dr Posnanski thinks we’re going to let this matter detain us he’s got another think coming. Another time, we might have taken it up, but we don’t have the time right now to start doing callisthenics and going on the warpath against Group East. He’ll have to magic up a replacement as his clerk.’

Sergeant Major Pont, a thickset master builder from Kalkar on the lower Rhine, smiled a knowing smile and said: ‘I’m of the view that we will not be spared this Herr Bertin. That’s what my nose tells me.’ And he pressed his thumb to his squat nose. ‘Lawyers can work magic.’ And as proof he told the story of an advocate in Cleves who had fought a firm of brick makers for a year and a half over two lorryloads of bricks and had nearly ruined it.

Lieutenant Winfried carried on going through some documents on the of the division’s step-by-step transfer. ‘Posnanski will have to handle it himself. I’m not going to bother His Excellency. He’s already back in his beloved east, sniffing lakes and pine woods from his window. If the French don’t put a spoke in our wheels, we’ll be gone in a fortnight and Group East can… shed a tear for us.’

Sergeant Major Pont stuck out his lower lip and murmured something about how far away they’d soon be from the lower Rhine, then veered into saying he’d like to go on a three-day official trip so he might visit his mother. Lieutenant Winfried replied crisply that the sergeant major’s desire was God’s desire, adding only that he would like him back five days before the staff departed.

Pont thanked him profusely and immediately consulted the railway map to work out the best place for him and his wife Luise to meet. He loved her, and she was the centre of his life.

In the early evening, Judge Advocate Dr Posnanksi sat at the round table in his chilly living room, which actually belonged to the pharmacist Jovin and his wife but had been removed from them by the town headquarters at Montfaucon and given to the judge advocate as his billet. The room was full of solid, old-fashioned furniture and artefacts. The lamp stood on a high alabaster pedestal and shed a mellow light through a pleated silk shade. The paintings on the wall were rustic renderings of members of Madame Jovin’s family, peasants, who had not been slow to seize their chance when the aristocracy’s estates were partitioned immediately after the revolution. The Jovins had a son in the field and a married daughter in Paris and under constant threat from enemy Zeppelins. Their interaction with their compulsory lodger was limited to a dozen words daily. But compared to some of his predecessors, they found this German officer tactful and not unlikeable. Madame Jovin occasionally remarked to her husband that the way he lived was almost French, praise which Monsieur Jovin felt he must circumscribe with an ‘Oh là là’. But Dr Posnanski was at home a lot, he drank black coffee and red wine in the evening, and he loved books and took his work back to his quarters, which he had left unchanged. He was domesticated, frugal, moderate and industrious, and he didn’t have the dreadful habit of smoking cigars, which left the curtains, tapestries and carpets hopelessly saturated with tobacco. Madame Jovin could not have wished for a more agreeable intruder for the duration of this dreadful war.

Posnanski, in an old brown tweed house jacket, laid his cigar in its white holder on the pewter ashtray from time to time and stretched his slippered feet under the table. The only military item in his clothing were his long, grey trousers with red piping. His thick neck bulged from an open shirt with no buttons or collar, and the Kroysing files lays scattered on Madame Jovin’s elegant walnut table. The Bertin affair glimmered on the edge of his awareness; it would be sorted out later – or not. As intellect was not held in respect and there was no demand for men of good will, it would probably fall through. A lawyer had to be well-versed in injustice and not let it disconcert him. But this case was about the fundamentals of coexistence. He had already established the legal facts in conversation with the brother and accuser. There was no conclusive proof in these papers that the younger Kroysing had been deliberately got rid of because of misappropriated foodstuffs – because meat, butter, ham, sugar and beer had not ended up in the right stomachs but the wrong ones. If there were no other cases and he’d had all the time in the world to become obsessed with this one, he would have questioned the men individually, forced the NCOs to confess, artfully pumped the orderly room and the company and battalion commanders for information about the normal duration of outpost duty and how often men were relieved, and then examined the question of why young Kroysing had not been given leave to appear before the court martial and why the files had been sent to Ingolstadt. All that having been established, the witness Bertin could have marched in and read out young Kroysing’s letter and testament. With his advocate’s oratory, bolstered by genuine conviction, he could then have forced the judges to see that such activities could not go unpunished as that would only encourage them. Advocate Posnanski was confident he could have brought such a case to a happy conclusion with the public behind him and the nation avidly following the matter for weeks, passionately debating whether there had been a cover-up or the officers were just carrying out their duties – in other words in peacetime.

Peacetime! Posnanski leant back in his chair and snorted derisively. In peacetime, this Kroysing case would have been a sure-fire route to victory and fame. Could something like that happen in peacetime? Of course it could. If you replaced the ASC battalion with a large industrial concern that clothed and fed its workers through its own canteens and shops, housed them and provided medical care, then the opportunities for corruption and profiteering at the expense of the mass of the workers would be just as great as in the Prussian army. If you put Kroysing in the overalls of an apprentice and future engineer, assigned him to dangerous work until his knowledge of a crime was extinguished by an industrial accident – an industrial accident helped along ever so slightly by cunning people in the know – then you pretty much had the exact sequence of events as Posnanski was convinced they had occurred. But woe betide the employers if such a thing happened in their company. In a well-governed nation they’d go to jail; in a nation where the exploited were on the march there would be a mass uprising whose effects would be felt deep into the middle classes; in Britain or France new parliamentary elections and a change of government would be required. Even in the German Fatherland, such a case would have far-reaching political consequences; none of the ruling groups would dare to back the guilty parties. An experienced reader of Berlin newspapers could easily imagine the tone that the conservative, liberal and even social democratic press would take. In peacetime.

It was very quiet in the house. Somewhere a mouse rustled behind the ancient wallpaper. Posnanski drank a mouthful of wine – he was using a porcelain beaker on three lion’s feet that made the wine look a darker red – and rose to move about as he thought.

That was all true for industrial areas, cities. But what form would the case take if it happened among farm workers out in the sticks on the big estates of West Prussia, Posen, East Prussia, Pomerania and Mecklenburg? He brooded over this, his hooded eyes half closed, stopping on a woven shepherd’s scene from the 18th century in which he could make out nothing but a narrow mesh of different coloured stitches, until gradually it revealed itself to be a representation of a human foot above a leafy plant. In a country setting, clarification would be more difficult and there would be more of a threat to the lawyer and witnesses. Some of them would be discredited as Jews, but the conclusion would be the same. The conservative Protestant landlords of the region east of the Elbe, the feudal Catholic landowners of Bavaria: they wouldn’t aid and abet such rash employees either and in the end would sacrifice their incompetent peers. But in wartime injustice piled up, committed by one nation on another – violence unleashed by one group on another – and became such a mountain that a bucketful of filth simply disappeared. The naked interests of life were so fully at play, the question of the existence and survival of the ruling classes, and therefore, admittedly, the ruled as well, that an individual’s right to life and honour was postponed until further notice – shifted on to a siding until civilisation was reinstated. Of course that signified a relapse into the times of the migrations, a decisive defeat for the Mosaic Convenant. Captain Niggl’s reckless dirty tricks, his trading in human life, was currently being carried out (if the mutual recriminations in the war bulletins were to be believed) with little better justification on the largest possible scale and on all fronts by many of the great nations – don’t bother asking after individuals, dear lawyer. And as all the groups concerned daily affirmed that they were fighting only to save their existence and human culture, a civilian such as Dr Posnanski had no influence at the moment. All he could do was advise Lieutenant Kroysing to wait until peace was re-established, get the names and addresses of as many of his brother’s comrades as possible now and bring his case as soon as the German nation, its lust for victory notwithstanding, was ready to rekindle the memory of Christoph Kroysing.

Dr Posnanski was now haunted by his figure. He’d read his letter and taken it on board. Then in deepening silence he’d studied his black notebook, which contained drawings, scraps of verse, thoughts, opinions, impressions, questions. To begin with Posnanski had been interested in the notebook because of a particular hobby of his: he loved shorthand, which he considered to be a valuable and sensible invention; he knew all the systems and ways of abbreviating and even at school had excelled at deciphering unknown handwriting. Even the style of Kroysing’s pencil strokes appealed to his inner being. An honest, clear-minded man had made those marks, and his good opinion was confirmed on every page by the content of the notebook. Young Kroysing had been someone. He had campaigned against injustice not with a particular end in mind, but simply because it was injustice – an ugly blemish on the body of the community he loved. A pure and wonderful love of Germany spoke from that young man. He didn’t have an heroically distorted vision of his nation. He saw its weaknesses. ‘I don’t understand,’ he once complained, ‘why our men let themselves be manipulated. They’re not dim-witted or without a sense of justice, but they’re almost more sensitive than women. Are we a feminine nation? Is it our fate simply to know what ails us and express it? If so, I don’t want to join in.’ He clearly realised that the high moral development of German writers and thinkers had its roots in the nation. ‘…but it seems to me that root is long and fibrous and takes a convoluted route and only sends up a beautiful plant to the light much later and somewhere far away. I wish we had a short, strong tap root that sent up healthy growth full of spikes and stings against violence.’ Another time he complained ‘that the beauty of life as expressed in a sunset, a starry night or even just ordinary daylight doesn’t seem to have any influence on the ways of the Germans. They enjoy nature for a couple of minutes and then fall back into old habits that might just as well have been developed in underground caves. But Goethe and Hölderlin, Mörike and Gottfried Keller, seem constantly aware of plants, wind, clouds, streams. The air of the countryside goes with them into their studies and offices, and to the lectern. That’s why they’re free. That’s why they’re great.’ Yes, my young friend, thought Posnanski, what you say there is very true and important. Such things cannot be learnt from working life. It’s a shame that we can’t talk about them any more. Men like you will be missed. Your verses are lovely and sensitive, though still very juvenile. But let us imagine that Hölderlin, who was a volunteer for a year, Sergeant Heinrich Heine, Lieutenant von Liliencron or Sergeant Major C.F. Meyer had been killed at your age – with assistance or otherwise, it doesn’t matter – or that the little cadet von Hardenberg had died at 14 of a cold caught on a training march – to say nothing of officer trainee Schiller drowned at 18 while swimming in a mountain stream in Swabia: would those young men’s legacy have looked much different from yours? Not at all. But how much poorer and more miserable the world would have been! We wouldn’t have known what we’d lost. ‘Yes,’ he sighed to himself, ‘it’s not an easy problem, and whoever can solve it for me gets a thaler and five Pfennigs: whether the people live for the gifted, or the gifted live for the people, so that any old Niggl has the right to abuse them. That’s why I’m going to have a look and see what Herr Bertin made of his meeting with you.’

^{CHAPTER SEVEN} The Kroysing novella

AT THAT HE opened the manuscript that Bertin had sent him. He poured another glass of wine, lit another slim Dutch cigar, looked disapprovingly at Bertin’s rather cramped handwriting, began to read the story, holding each sheet up to the light, and was quickly absorbed and captivated. The light cast a soft glow, the mouse rustled behind the wallpaper, people passed the window, talking, but Posnanski was now in Fosses wood in a hollow full of shot-up trees where two abandoned guns raised their long, mournful necks to the sky and amongst a group of workers in field grey he saw the tanned, friendly face of young Kroysing, his curved forehead and calm eyes. The work could hardly pass as a novella, since it contained no artful characterisation or surprising plot twists. Sometimes the language wasn’t very polished, which could be excused by the speed of writing, or was too bold where a more restrained expression would’ve been more powerful. But it did invoke the figure of the man as perceived by the author and it showed what had happened clearly and pitilessly, shaking the world from its sleep so that it could not just snore on as a French shell dispatched the writer’s recently won friend. And it made it quite clear that the burden of this death did not lie with the French. No, behind the miserable ASC chiefs lay the gigantic outline of the owners and unleashers of violence – all those who were planning and carrying out the suicide of Europe, those backward types who saw their neighbours only as something to attack and whose last trump card in international competition was: the gun.

The fact that Bertin had not invented names in this draft created an unusual and convincing effect. The hero was simply called Christoph, and other names were indicated by initial capital letters. At the end of the fourth page he found a note from the author to himself: ‘Improve names.’ But however essential it might be for artistic effect to invent credible characters and refine real events to bring out their essence, the relaxed handling of names and events meant this first draft spoke all the more directly to the lonely reader. Posnanski groaned in agony and also in satisfaction; under no circumstances should he let the unprepossessing Bertin get away. He belonged to the same group of men as young Kroysing and Posnanski himself: those who tried to sort the world out and using the right tools for the job – justice, reason and informed debate. It might seem laughable but it was true: whoever used those tools inevitably excited the anger of the evil principle and its minions, the men of violence with their feverish thirst for action and desire to oppress. And as Posnanksi buttoned his housecoat over his rotund body, because it was a cold March night and he was tired, to his amazement he found himself marching over to the fireplace at the far end of the room where embers still glowed. Marching because the glow embodied the enemy, the eternal foe of all creativity, the opponent and the opposition in one, the blocker, Satan himself. He literally saw him squatting there with claws, a beak, bat-like wings and a dragon’s tail, casting around with his ambiguous basilisk’s eyes, always on the brink of shrill laughter. It was this rash, devouring element, allied with ubiquitous steel, that had given birth to every technology and forged every gun, and whose omnipotent laughter lay behind every explosion. It had killed young Kroysing and wounded his older brother. It threatened Bertin in the form of duds, it had killed Judge Advocate Mertens in the form of an aerial bomb, it lurked over him, Posnanski, over Winfried, over that old Junker Lychow – over every man and every woman. Man had made a bad job of taming the fire that had fallen from Heaven; reason too, the light of Heaven, and morality, born on Mount Sinai, he had handled like a schoolboy. In that dark hour before bedtime, Posnanski was inclined to give the human race as a whole a mark of three minus. That made Pupil Bertin all the more indispensable. Fire had consumed Pupil Kroysing, and the same thing happened to countless others every day. It was sheeplike logic to plunge into the fire in ever greater numbers because of that and not bother about individuals because that had no purpose in such times. But Pupil Posnanski knew that there was a purpose and that it was the only purpose because it was always at hand; it didn’t wait for the fire to go out but quietly smuggled the creative principle away from the destroyers. At present there was nothing to be done about the Kroysing case, and Posnanski carefully laid the various sheets of paper in the orange folder with a Montmédy file reference. He put the Kroysing novel in there too.

But the Bertin case was one to fight. He’d used the first half of the night well and he’d use the second half even better, because people were always much cleverer and more whole when asleep than when awake. And as Posnanski opened the window to spare Madame Jovin the worst of the bother, he said to himself: there are serious ways to rescue a man and funny ways, direct and indirect, honest and dishonest. They’re all allowed. The only way that is proscribed is the one that doesn’t work and puts him in more danger. Common sense and what he remembered from his last conversation with Lieutenant Winfried told Posnanski that he wouldn’t be able to count on Lychow in this instance but should turn to his ADC (which he was wrong about). The only one he could rope in fully was Eberhard Kroysing, because it would be easy to make him see that the future shape of his campaign against Niggl stood or fell on Bertin’s testimony. Sitting on the edge of his bed in his underpants, groaning, flushed and tight-lipped from the effort of reaching his sock suspenders over the bulk of his stomach, Posnanski came to a final decision: the main thing was to sort out the Bertin affair.

Then, when he was already in his pyjamas under his soft clean coverlet and had turned off the lamp, he noticed to his annoyance that he’d left the light on in the living room. Fire always resisted him, he thought, mocking himself grumpily, as get got up, fussed about with his slippers, went out and turned the light off. He noticed with amazement how bright the moon, now sinking in the west, shone through the window.

Once he was asleep and dreaming, he was transported to a fabulous landscape and there came to him the face of Christoph Kroysing, whom he’d never seen. It appeared surrounded by luxuriant southern foliage like the face of a man pushing through a jungle, and in the middle of the jungle resided the sleeping man – Posnanski, in rejuvenated form, fervently engaged in regulating the traffic on an anthill and in reaching, with the help of white termites, the ideal offered by the round public square and the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial church outside his window. As if seen from the perspective of ants, the young sergeant’s countenance hung like a large orb in the midst of bayonet-like agave leaves, which ended in a spike and were ridged with narrow little points, and palm fronds seemed to grab at his visored cap. Beneath the red ribbon and visor of his cap, Kroysing’s steady, dark brown eyes were trained on Posnanski, who was busily working away, and there was a smile on his lips beneath his broad forehead and arching brows. ‘As you can see, I was unfortunately detained, my dear colleague,’ his voice said from far above the earth, and Posnanski, a chubby schoolboy crouched in the sand, replied: ‘I hope you’ve got a note from your parents. You brown-eyed types are always playing truant and leaving us to do all the work. It’s a typical sixth former’s trick.’

‘Oh, you poor thing. You’ve really changed,’ said the young sergeant. ‘Can’t you see that there’ll be no leave for me?’

And then Posnanski recognised the fire burning among the plants: iron and oxygen had combined to set their green cells ablaze. ‘A hundred years of purgatory will pass in no time,’ he said reassuringly. And the man held prisoner by the plants agreed: ‘War years count double.’

‘I’ll be your representative in the meantime, my dear colleague,’ said Posnanski into a telephone attached to a green silk cord that he was now holding in his hand, and from far above, now transformed into a sort of moon but still connected to Posnanski’s desk lamp by a long, twisted root, the prisoner spoke into the receiver: ‘Affirmative.’

^{CHAPTER EIGHT} A cry for help

IT WAS A lucky thing for Private Bertin that the First Company’s postal orderly never arrived from Etraye-East until the early hours of the afternoon. Otherwise he would have come to grief that day. There wasn’t much left to crush in his soul, but such miserable little scraps of optimism and presence of mind as remained were obliterated by Diehl’s carbon copy. He understood immediately what had happened and saw what it meant. This was the end. He’d had a bit of wild good luck and been applied for by a court martial – but because it was him, things didn’t follow their natural course, and an ASC major was able to turn the request down and suggest a replacement who was no replacement at all. It was disgusting, it was enough to make you puke, to make you mutiny, to make you want to die. Would anyone keep trying after such a rebuff? Surely not. There was only one way out. He’d better go at once to Kroysing, to Sister Kläre, to people who knew him and wished him well, and who thought that he wasn’t meant to hump crates of wet explosives around and break his back under a load that made the blood rush to his head and weighed 89 pounds even when dry. He gave himself a cursory wash, told Sergeant Barkopp he was going out and ran rather than walked up the familiar hill path, which was getting muddier each day but luckily froze over at night. Blind to the misty beauty of the early spring evening under a jade sky, he trudged on, getting worked up over a long letter and cry for help he was composing in his head to his wife Lenore – as if she were in a position to help. To the rhythm of his footsteps, his troubled heart let rip, spilling forth a confused, accusing mixture of self-pity and entreaties, based upon a pathetic overestimate of the influence his father-in-law could wield on his daughter’s behalf.

That was how he consoled himself as he wished the hospital porter good evening, exchanging remarks about the weather. And although his cry for help showed a certain childishness, this sort of daydream did him good. It put him in a position to describe the matter to Eberhard Kroysing and his two room mates with the kind of casual self-mockery needed to maintain and if possible increase his esteem with the young officer.

In the meantime, because they shared a room and a common fate, Lieutenants Mettner and Flachsbauer had been let in on the matter that bound Bertin and Kroysing, gradually at first then completely – and during the long conversations that filled the endless expanse of days, some of Bertin’s other experiences had been discussed, for example the bizarre outcome of Lieutenant von Roggstroh’s medal recommendation. The two young officers roared with laughter, recognising the way the military worked; both of them had been robbed of the credit for valiant actions while some ‘lazy bones’ or other benefited. They thought that Bertin had behaved impeccably and warned him that he should under no circumstances make a hasty complaint or do anything stupid. He could safely leave the next move to the judge advocate, whose division would hit back at such a rebuff as a matter of honour if nothing else.

The white-washed barracks room with its three metal beds looked more homely than it had a few days ago. A vase had appeared, containing pussy willow, alder and some early greenery – a sign of the interest Sister Kläre had lately started to take in the three lieutenants – all three of them. She was careful to resist a mild impulse to favour one of them, a sturdy, big-nosed lad whose exceptional character shone through. As a result, a humorous undertone of jealousy had broken out among the three, who half liked and half couldn’t stand each other, and this new tinge to their lives, with its attendant rivalry and competition, provided a vigorous spur to healing. For her part, Sister Kläre, a grown woman, was delighted by the beneficial effect she was having on them and appeared to take all three young men equally lightly, learning various details of their lives and sometimes bringing in work to do while she sat with them.

Now that the good weather had started, there was no need to worry about keeping the windows shut, and the men could smoke to their hearts’ content. At the same time, the wounded men, who’d been patched up in a pretty makeshift way, found the arrival of spring very tiring. And so an hour of bed rest had been prescribed from 5pm to 6pm before the evening meal for all rooms and wards with no exceptions: no talking, no smoking, no reading – only dozing. After months of overexertion, soldiers can sleep like babies – any time and with enjoyment. Bertin sat rather unhappily on his stool, wondering what to do in the meantime as Pahl would be sleeping too. The lieutenants, who already had their bedclothes pulled up to their chins, consoled him that Sister Kläre would soon appear. She had threatened and promised to check if they were obeying orders. She might let Bertin write his letter in her room during the period of bed rest (and the letter would now come to him in more considered form than on the way up the hill).

Sister Kläre came in with her light step. Some nurses stamped about like dragoons. Sister Kläre had all the beauty of a nun, Bertin thought, as she paused for a moment in the doorway, surprised to find him there, yet pleased: she blushed slightly. ‘That’s nice,’ she said, ‘but you’ll have to leave.’ Bertin obediently stood up and made his request. What beautiful shining blue eyes this woman had, or rather this lady, to use an expression that had gradually lost all relevance in his life. ‘I have a much better idea,’ she said. ‘Come with me. Goodbye, gentlemen. See you in an hour.’

Bertin had to take his coat and cap with him. Then he followed Sister Kläre through the half rectangle of the barracks’ corridors to a special wing that was damp and smelt of warm steam with a whiff of sulphuric acid. Opening a door, they stepped on to wet decking as in a bathroom. From a chair rose a giant of a man dressed in the overalls of a hospital orderly. His left hand was missing and had been replaced with a hook.

‘This is my young charge, Pechler. Give him a bath fit for a general and smoke out all his bees. He’s to be back in room 19 in an hour or so.’

‘Bloomin heck, Sister Kläre,’ chuckled Herr Pechler, ‘I’ve never had a general in before.’

Bertin lay in a bath full of hot water, a dark grey zinc tub in a dim cell. He could hear Herr Pechler outside going about his business, and it flashed through his mind to give him 50 Marks as a thank you. He hadn’t enjoyed the deep pleasure of a bath like this for nine months; the only chance he’d had to rub the old skin off his body had been in streams or the very occasional shower. He was trained to accept this, and only now that he was enjoying such civilised amenities again did he feel their lack since the start of the Glory Days. The immeasurable joy of a hot bath – which he’d taken as a matter of course every morning in the first winter of the war. How wonderfully relaxing to sink into it and ease out his limbs, how like sleep it was to abandon himself to it, only much rarer! And how nice it was to meet a woman, who wanted nothing from him and from whom he wanted nothing, but who simply wanted to show her thanks for a book, which he happened to have written.

Would he ever write again? Would the frost that had gone right into the marrow of his bones ever melt? Would he ever be able to write convincingly of all he’d experienced, the enormous misery and his bitter rage at the infernal stupidity and evil he’d encountered? They’d managed to reduce him. Like all the others, he’d been brought up to stand in the breach for the homeland, to remain steadfast, not to shirk the common fate. But now he was tired. All he wanted was some peace, to turn his back on the mountain of crap that kept threatening to engulf him, to escape from all the unchecked hostility directed at undermining the intellect and intellectuals in order to bring them down and bury them. He no longer cared what lieutenants and his class comrades thought of him. He didn’t want to see or hear any more about the demands of service; he wanted to crawl behind books and plunge into fantasy, to dissolve the world as it had been shown to be into farce, into a smile at the state of things that should linger like a soft reflection from the sky on the ragtag creatures of the earth. Over there, not very far away, lay the Ardennes forest, which Shakespeare had peopled with immortal beings, locating among its trees fugitives and exiles, melacholics and lovely maidens, youths and old men, dukes and minstrels. How he suddenly longed for that world as he lay there sweating in the warm steam. Ah, but he no longer knew a single verse of that heavenly music off by heart; none of the dialogue now resonated within him, all forgotten. He did, however, know how an enormous weight breaks a man’s back, tightens his shoulder muscles and pushes his torso down on to his pelvis. He had, however, learnt all the labourer’s arts, how to use tools and his hands and all his muscles, lots of tricks, and he had become the Comrade and sleeping companion of those upon whom society builds its entire way of life. He had, however, witnessed all manner of destruction, men’s tenacity and endurance in the face of sludge, hunger and the threat of death, mutual killing on an industrial scale, mountains of rubble, rivers of blood, frozen twisted corpses, wounded men in the grip of fever shivering by a fire, and the mysterious impossibility of finding a way out that led not to death but to peace. He knew that it would all have to mature within him, year after year, the way a good ham is smoked. Could it be given expression? Would it resist being shaped, like the water in this bath as he opened and closed his hand? The novella was no good; he suddenly saw that. It had been stupid of him to show it to Dr Posnanski. He’d better stand up now, soap himself like some dingy old underwear, shower off and go back out into the world refreshed, turning his back on past and future dreams as soon as his foot hit the clean decking, the way you walk away from a shower that’s run cold, and deal with the stupid little private matter on which his life unfortunately depended.

^{CHAPTER NINE} Everything is hunky dory

DURING THE REST hour, Sister Kläre sat in her room and wrote to her two children, who were being better looked after and brought up in a countryside boarding school than they could have been within a marriage destroyed by war. She wanted to write to her husband too, whom she still held very dear, although a shared life had become impossible since he’d started to react in a threatening way to any dissent. And who could listen with equanimity to him berating the Kaiser for joining with the lunatic Austrians in unleashing a war that was already lost because he was afraid of the Pan-Germans? Who could remain silent when a once highly gifted man fumed that German misanthropy was to blame for the war and whoever was a slave to that would pay the price into the third and fourth generations, as was written in the scriptures? Perhaps later they’d find a doctor who could remove the burden from Lieutenant Schwersenz’s mind and the poison from his soul. Klara Schwersenz would then gladly take him by the hand again, start a new home, bring the children back, rebuild their life together and forget the whole dreadful nightmare. Until then, everything had to stay as it was: he buried away in Hinterstein valley, and she working in the service of the Fatherland. Klara Schwersenz, daughter of the well-know Pidderit family from the Rhineland, now simply Sister Kläre, didn’t see herself as a martyr. She had a found a second youth in the tumble of war, had become freer and at the same time more capable, loved her work, and also being a woman, and knew that you got but one transitory life. She wrote to her children in clear, pointed handwriting. Later she would do some ironing in the lieutenants’ room.

There was a gentle knock at the door. An orderly brought the confidential news that a gentlemen called Judge Advocate Kostanski, or something like that, wanted to say goodbye to her. She raised her eyebrows, shrugged her shoulders and said to show him in. A moment later, Posnanski’s bulky figure filled the front of the room. Sister Kläre sat on the bed, offered him the wooden stool and asked if the time had come for him disappear to the east.

Posnanski blew out his clean-shaven cheeks, rolled his frog-like eyes at her, and, thinking how attractive she looked and that she should always wear this nun’s costume, began to speak in a very skilled and humane way: yes, he said, he was here to say goodbye, but that was really a side issue. Much more important was a question he had for her, a request in fact. They were both adults who had seen something of life and so there was no point in beating about the bush. Through Lieutenant Kroysing, he, Posnanksi, had learnt of a shocking abuse of justice to which Kroysing’s younger brother had fallen victim. In connection with that, Private Bertin had come to his attention. He believed the man had been shunting ammunition around long enough and that it was time to think about the country’s intellectual nourishment after the war and make sure a few talented men were saved, and he’d tried to act on that belief. He’d noticed that Sister Kläre had taken to the writer as well.

‘Very much so,’ she agreed with a smile. ‘I’m letting him soak in the bath right now, the poor lice-ridden chap.’

‘So much the better,’ replied Posnanski. ‘Then perhaps you’ve heard what happened to my application to have the worthy gentleman transferred to our nice little court martial?’

‘Not a sausage,’ said Sister Kläre.

Right, said Posnanski, in that case he’d better begin at the beginning with the Trojan War. And in an easy, good-humoured way he described the simmering resentment between the army groups east and west of the Meuse, and how, against this background, Bertin’s battalion had refused his request, and that the matter now looked completely hopeless. If the division had not been about to move off and if Excellency Lychow’s mind had not already been in the east, then the Western Group Command would certainly have had its way. Because right was on their side. A request from high-ranking personnel to have a man who was only fit for limited service to perform office duties ought not to be refused when men fit for active service were being released. After a bit of back and forth, ASC private Bertin would have been transferred from his unit to the Lychow Divisional Staff and given his marching orders. But when the gods were busy, dwarves came out on top and that’s what would happen now, unless higher powers intervened.

‘Higher powers than a divisional general?’ asked Sister Kläre in astonishment. ‘Where will you find them?’

‘There’s one very near at hand,’ replied Posnanski.

Sister Kläre blushed, deeper and deeper. ‘That’s a lot of silly gossip,’ she said and got up.

‘Gracious lady,’ said Posnanski, remaining seated, ‘let me ignore that rejection for two minutes. You may yourself have noticed that Herr Bertin has held out under considerable pressure for quite a long time and is now in a parlous state. He might survive another year if a dud or shell doesn’t wipe him out before then. We can get him a decent job in the next few days. Why pussyfoot around with something that is simple and humane and in everyone’s best interests. Of course I know it’s all gossip. People can’t live without gossip, and the higher staff echelons constitute their own social zone and have their own interests and gossip. But there’s always a grain of truth in such gossip, and so I assume that the crown prince has had the honour of being introduced to you and taking tea at your house. Would it be asking too much to suggest that you telephone the exalted gentleman, not today, not tomorrow, but, say, this coming Sunday, and ask him for a favour, which we believe would benefit the collective intellectual good and not just a personal acquaintance? Wouldn’t you do it without a second thought if you were in Berlin?’

Sister Kläre had sat down again. The flush on her cheeks had faded to a rosy glow, and she looked pensively at the tips of her shoes and her ankles in their coarse black woollen stockings. ‘I shouldn’t like to meet you in court as lawyer for the other side, Dr Posnanski,’ she said.

‘My dear lady,’ replied Posnanski soberly, ‘I hope I’d know better than to do that. No one can win a case against Saint Genevieve.’

Sister Kläre shook her head impatiently. ‘We’re talking like monkeys,’ she said. ‘This isn’t Berlin. The crown prince isn’t a gentleman, and I’m not a lady. I’m a nurse, which makes me a sergeant at best, and the crown prince is a general and commander of an entire front. I hope that lets you see that what you’re asking me to do is quite monstrous.’

‘I’m afraid, my dear, gracious lady, that you’re talking to a civilian, a Prussian civilian but a civilian nonetheless. I’m completely convinced that the crown prince, who is a person like you or me, will gratefully kiss your hand if you dare to do the monstrous, as you call it. After all, what are you asking of him? That he get his adjutant to write a couple of words to rescue the situation. Words from on high, like in a fairytale.’ And when Sister Kläre didn’t reply, he suddenly added in a different, more nonchalant tone: ‘We don’t want things to be dictated by a bunch of bourgeois philistines after the war. I’m interested in your view – you don’t want that, do you? Surely the novel Love at Last Sight is worth conquering your compunction for.’

For a moment, silence reigned between them. Sister Kläre looked calmly into her companion’s ugly face, and he looked equally calmly into her beautiful face. She sensed that this frog knew no prejudices and understood people’s ways. For him there was no shame in admitting what one had had the guts to do. Nonetheless, it was unpleasant for a sensitive woman to realise she was the object of tittle-tattle and that her private life, which was of no concern to anyone else, was a source of entertainment for others. If she consented now – all right, I’ll phone the crown prince – she would be confirming the gossip around her and betraying the relationship to this lawyer whom she didn’t know. Caution demanded that she not do it, tact demanded it, femininity, the social contract. No one who counted would blame her for having a friendship with such an agreeable and high-ranking man, a prince and son of the Kaiser, who set every German girl’s heart a-pounding when he carried the white Borussian standard through the streets of Bonn, her home town. Every woman who knew of the liaison envied Klara Schwersenz, formerly Klara Pidderit, or stared up at her in awe. But she must not confess it openly. She must preserve an impassive countenance and the family honour. And this lawyer in uniform wanted her to confess it openly. He sat there girded in tan leather with a look on his fat face, a Socratic look, that exhorted her not to kick up such a fuss when she was so beautiful. Not to erect a cardboard façade between them. Not to act more stupid than life already was. Hadn’t it been really rather a nice experience? And even if it hadn’t – if the best she could say was: it was okay; it was fine – shouldn’t one be extremely grateful for any small pleasure when the whole world faced a doubtful future? Sister Kläre realised she was smiling openly at her own inhibitions, gently mocking herself. She reached her hand out to Posnanski and said: ‘Thank you, Dr Posnanski. I’ll think it over, but for now I must fish our charge out of the bath.’

But when Sister Kläre went into Pechler the bath orderly’s room, the bird had, as he put it, flown. Bertin had hurried off to see Pahl, reproaching himself for neglecting him and saying that he really should put his own worries aside for once and think about him. He was concerned, however, about how he would justify his desire to be transferred to the court martial to Pahl.

Thus two ASC men met by Pahl’s bed: Lebehde and Bertin, both currently troubled in mind but physically comforted; for one of them had emerged newborn from the bath and the other had been in the kitchen, which also had its merits. They were unanimous in their view that Wilhelm was changed beyond recognition. He was sitting up for half an hour at a time, putting on weight and felt himself to be on the mend. ‘I bet you’re surprised, aren’t you?’ he grinned. ‘Yes, I’m feeling better. It’s not getting me down so much any more. The worst is when they change the bandages in the morning.’ He frowned. ‘Just lying there knowing you’re going to be put through the mill and there’s no help for it – that’s what knocks the heart out of you.’

Karl Lebehde caught himself wanting to stroke Pahl’s hands. Bertin wondered anxiously what he’d say to this martyr if he started to talk hopefully about their future work together in Berlin. Diehl’s carbon copy rustled in his pocket. Perhaps there would be a way to give a funny twist to the whole application story, which thanks to Major Jansch’s kindness now affected Pahl too.

‘Now I’m going to talk as much as I want,’ joked Pahl. ‘My bed is my castle, and we can spin a few yarns.’ He said that since his bandage had been changed he knew how prisoners must have felt in the Middle Ages when they were waiting to be tortured – tomorrow at 9am I’ll be interrogated again – or executed. It was horrible to have to hold still and let people do as they wanted with you like some kind of overgrown baby. The terrible pain, the intrusion – it was all awful. You didn’t need to experience an actual execution, be hanged or have you head chopped off or be shot, to realise that the death penalty was the lowest of all human ideas; it was enough to have your own body reduced to a passive object. Abolishing the death penalty was a natural step for people who had electricity and could spread the truth through print. Then he asked if there was any news from Russia. What he missed most here in hospital was the chance to discuss that earth-shattering event.

No, said Bertin and Lebehde. They only knew what everyone else knew. The three of them marvelled at the speed and consistency with which things were moving in Russia. They all admitted that they hadn’t thought the Russians had it in them. Bertin in particular, who had twice crossed the Russian border with his school class and had taken an optional Russian class at school, repeated several times that no one had expected it because the people were so passive and had such meek faith in the Tsar. It had seemed as though the sun rose and set at the behest of the ‘Little Father’, and now, look, it had carried on doing its duty and was still shining down on Little Mother Russia although the double-headed imperial eagle was gone.

‘One day every beer glass will be full.’

‘Ours too,’ said Pahl firmly, looking at Bertin.

But Bertin didn’t want to follow him down that path. Fortunately, he remembered something he’d witnessed when he was working with the Russian prisoners during the weeks at Romagne. One of them, a lad with teeth like a fish and a full blonde beard, was sitting at the fire in the lunch break distributing pieces of bread amongst his comrades, not out of kind-heartedness but for money: 10 Pfennigs a slice, quite costly. A young Russki with his cap pushed back and a blonde fringe, handed him a coin, received his slice, held it in front of him for a moment, opened his mouth as if to take a bite but then calmly said: ‘When we get you home, you miserable Kulak, we’ll batter you to death and that’s a promise.’ Then he took a bite. You could see the bread seller turning a lighter shade of grey beneath his dirty, tanned skin, and his small, light-coloured eyes were fixed on the other man’s as he replied: ‘If such is God’s will, Grigori, I’ll have you shot first.’ But the younger man, chewing away with his mouth full, just laughed and shook his head. ‘Did you hear that, my friends? We’d better watch out for those Kulaks.’ Muttered laughter ran through the group, but many of them clearly didn’t want to queer their pitch with the profiteer, who calmly went on selling his wares, checking coins and shoving them in his pockets. However, he did throw a quick glance at the guard’s bayonet, which didn’t escape Grigori’s notice. ‘No,’ he laughed, cleaning his hands on his coat, ‘there won’t be any Cossack there to protect you from us then.’

‘If God so wills it, then no one will protect me,’ the bearded man replied patiently. He was a gaunt, middle-aged man, who obviously had to exercise great self-control to hold on to the bread in order to sell it. This scene, which Bertin had observed during a cold snap worthy of Russia in the middle of France, had stayed with him because it was so savagely strange. Since the outbreak of the Revolution, it had taken on a deeper meaning. ‘If it has gripped the peasants, then it’ll succeed and it’ll last,’ he said pensively. ‘It started with the peasants in France too in 1789. They were crawling across the fields like animals, looking for something to eat – ragged beings reminiscent of people, as a writer called Taine wrote. The lord of the manor had sold the crops in order to live bon in Paris. It might succeed in Russia too, but what about at home,’ said Bertin doubtfully, ‘where everything’s so well organised?’

‘We’ve invented organised famine,’ said Pahl.

And Karl Lebehde, his fat fingers folded across his stomach, said in a measured voice: ‘My dear man, has the phrase “grubbing trip” never come before your esteemed eyes? According to my old lady, whose letters are quite uplifting, Berliners go swarming across the Mark with rucksacks on Saturday evenings, sort of like older versions of the youngsters from the Wandervogel rambling club, and curse like blazes if a gendarme asks to look inside their packs. And I’ll tell you something for nothing, there aren’t many gendarmes that take the stuff off them, and it’s easy to see why. If this goes on for another year…’

‘Another year!’ cried Bertin and Pahl as one. ‘Listen,’ said Bertin, overcome by the dreadful prospect of an endless war and and full of good will towards the comrades who shared his fate. ‘For a couple of days, I’ve been mulling something over, and sometimes it makes me hopeful and sometimes it fills me with dread. I want you to tell me what you’d do in my place. It actually affects you quite deeply too, Wilhelm,’ and he described what had happened, or what he could guess had happened, between his first conversation with Posnanski and the present moment. Pahl’s hands trembled slightly as he held the carbon copy in silence. Lebehde bent his copper head over the pillow and read it too. Bertin waited to hear what they would say as if it were a court judgement. Then Pahl tore the thin paper into long strips. ‘What they want won’t happen,’ he said, ‘and what they don’t want will. You’ve no idea how well this suits us, my friend. I had a long chat with Karl about it the day before yesterday. I was still woozy when we had our first talk. I had completely forgotten something that my agent only wrote to me about in detail in January. And now you appear like an angel from Heaven and put everything straight again.’

Bertin looked uncomprehendingly from one of the two hardened agitators to the other and listened while Lebehde explained all the preliminaries that had to be gone through before a man could be transferred from the front back to Germany. A detour via the court martial would reinvigorate the plan and make it realistic.

‘No,’ said Pahl, shaking his head, ‘unfortunately, the major’s got it wrong. I’ll be buzzing off back to Germany with my toe, and you, dear chap, had better get some help with this even if you have to go to the moon for it. We’ll soon prise you out of a court martial.’

Bertin felt suddenly ashamed of the initial caution that had made him want to keep quiet. He needed to be open with those who trusted him and discuss with them how best to proceed. He was ready for the fight now and armed against the potential vicissitudes to come. That was why he just laughed when a nurse came up to Pahl’s bed, asked rather curtly which of the two of them was Bertin and said he’d been expected him for some time in room 19.

The two men left behind watched his retreating back and thinning hair. ‘We did him an injustice that time back in Romagne, Karl,’ said Pahl. But Karl Lebehde observed impassively that it was better to do someone an injustice than to suffer one and that he hadn’t noticed anything.

Judge Advocate Posnanski took a while to say goodbye to Kroysing and was almost paternal in his warmth. The room mates listened with amusement to the fat man talking but thought that what he said made sense. For Lieutenant Kroysing didn’t want to accept that his plan to send the sappers a replacement in the form of Bertin simply wasn’t going to work. Posnanski spoke only of how important Bertin was as the only witness in the future trail of retired civil servant Niggl from Weilheim in Upper Bavaria. Kroysing could not deny the logic of his analysis, though he growled in reluctance: ‘You want me to start fighting private battles like everyone else in this war.’ This ‘you’ encompassed Lieutenants Flachsbauer and Mettner, who supported the judge advocate’s plans. ‘The man is capable of commanding a company, and you want me to put him in a display cabinet.’

The man was born for the court martial, Lieutenant Flachsbauer cried in reply. And Lieutenant Mettner asked sarcastically if he’d ever thought of letting him choose for himself.

‘Choose?’ said Kroysing haughtily, though he was laughing. ‘Oh, that’d be great.’

‘You tyrant,’ teased Lieutenant Flachsbauer.

‘Slave driver,’ added Lieutenant Mettner, who was often genuinely annoyed by Kroysing’s tyrannical and commanding manner. And in order to irritate him he told the story of a minor and not particularly relevant incident he’d seen a few weeks before he was wounded. It demonstrated a lack of backbone which showed the average officer clearly represented the average German, as Mettner had come to know him. As a liaison officer with Group West he had passed on a complaint made to him by an officer who had poured his heart out to him during a inspection in a neighbouring sector. The officer had said that because of the relay stations it was impossible to get the high ups to understand that each of his companies in the front line (‘in the shit,’ as he put it) had a combat strength of barely 40 rifles at its disposal and not over 110 as was continually reported. ‘And then the high ups wonder when we take a pasting. Sick and transferred men are always counted in too.’

Mettner promised to deal with it. But when one of the inspectors from the Lychow Group appeared to check it out, the officer denied it all for fear of making himself unpopular with the regiment, and Lieutenant Mettner was left in the lurch. ‘And he did only have 40 rifles when the French suddenly attacked. And you want to throw your unsuspecting friend in among that lot where he’ll always be putting their backs up? Well, I’d sooner not have you for a brother.’

Kroysing started up, upset by the word ‘brother’, but controlled himself: he had always put the common good above his own interests, he grumbled. Was that a problem?

‘But you can see that in this case circumstances require a different response,’ said Posnanksi soothingly. ‘So let me have Bertin or rather help me to get him, for—’ But the three men in the room explained they’d already heard the whole story from the jinxed man himself. ‘So much the better,’ twinkled Posnanski, ‘then you can be my representatives.’ And he said that he had found a champion for Bertin in Sister Kläre, who was going to telephone a high-ranking personage and ask him to intervene. ‘Keep at her. Don’t harangue her but don’t let it go either. If she gets annoyed, don’t push it. Maybe you can bring it up in 12 hours or so, eh? All she promised me was to think about it. You look as though you won’t leave her in peace until she gets on that phone, dear chap.’

Kroysing flushed and said he would do what he could, just as Bertin walked in eager to hear from Posnanksi if his cause was lost. They laughed at him, mocking his downbeat attitude. Speaking in the tone of a regimental commander, Kroysing announced that Bertin was to be transferred to the court martial because of lack of bottle. Posnanski assured him that effective steps in that direction had already been taken. When Posnanski finally set off, he left behind a happy party and Bertin was much reassured. Posnanski shook Bertin’s hand warmly and said he was counting on him and was only going on ahead in order to spend his leave in Berlin.

‘Have a good time, then,’ said Kroysing, ‘and say hello to the old place for me.’

‘I will,’ said Posnanski. ‘Any particular part?’

‘The part between the Technical University and Wittenbergplatz,’ said Kroysing. ‘Where there are always so many girls’ legs on view.’

‘Right, so Tauentzienstraße and the Kurfürstendamm,’ said Posnanksi, pretending to make a note on the palm of his hand.

‘Stop,’ cried Bertin. ‘Where are the files?’

‘You’ll make an excellent clerk, my legal friend,’ said Posnanski gravely. ‘I’ll leave them with my representative.’ And then he finally pushed off, accompanied to his car by Bertin.

When he returned, Kroysing asked him in passing if frog face had told him anything important. No, replied Bertin innocently, he’d just told him a bit about the people in the staff with whom he might come into contact. Kroysing seemed happy with this reply. None of the four initiates had let on to Bertin whom the judge advocate meant by his representative. Posnanki had worked on the assumption that people usually come over best when they act naturally. However, the three officers, who had all been rather taken aback by Posnanski’s disclosure, kept the information from Bertin out of a curious kind of esprit de corps. They were from the hospital, and so was Sister Kläre. Bertin wasn’t. The person to be telephoned was a hospital secret. Outsiders didn’t need to know about it. But above all, they liked the idea of at least sharing a secret with this woman, if nothing else. Until that day, the idea that she’d had something with the crown prince had just been talk. Now it seemed it was real, and each of the three young men envied the general. For some time now, none of them had seen Sister Kläre as a nurse. They all felt themselves to be enveloped by her sparkling charm. For in a long war, however manly a soldier’s behaviour may be, he falls back into childhood in most important respects. He no longer eats with a knife and fork, but instead spoons gruel into his mouth. He no longer goes to the toilet on his own, but sits on a public latrine like a child in a nursery. He suppresses his own will to an extraordinary degree, obeying blindly and unconditionally, as a small child obeys adults whom it trusts or who force it to comply. His feelings of love and hate, of liking and aversion, are directed at his superiors, who replace father and mother, and at his comrades who represent siblings. In this seamlessly childish existence, where destruction plays as big a part as it does in the nursery, there is no room for relationships between men and women except in the imagination. Furthermore, soldiers like children are spared the struggle for their daily bread and do not have to deal with the relationship between earnings and productive work, with the toil, labour and rewards that are such an integral part of adult life. And so the erotic impulse is much stronger in the creative environment of peace than in the destructive one of war, where it can easily be diverted to the same sex, completing the analogy with childhood. But after the shock and physical agony of the first weeks in hospital, there is a rebirth, a sort of maturing such as follows the torture of puberty in primitive communities, and the young men start to look around themselves with new eyes, discover that there are women and are thrown into turmoil. But towards Bertin, who was denied the blessings of this rebirth, they were unconsciously patronising, like 15-year-olds to a nine-year-old, treating him like a lower being, harmless and inadequate. What did he know of adult secrets?

^{CHAPTER TEN} The misanthrope

AS SISTER KLÄRE made her way to room 19 to do some ironing as promised, who should be carrying her ironing board, a joyful smile of farewell on his chubby face despite the white bandage round his neck, but Father Lochner. As before, the divisional Catholic chaplain from the other bank sported flying coat tails and a violet collar. ‘Lieutenant!’ he cried, more Rhenish than ever, ‘Ah’m mad happy to see you, so I am.’ (The phrase ‘mad happy’ could cover a wide range of insanity.) And as he carefully laid the white-covered board, which was almost as a tall as a man, against the wall, he took Kroysing’s right hand in both of his and shook it for such a long time that Kroysing almost began to look uncomfortable. He briefly greeted Bertin then introduced himself to the other two patients, sat down on a bed, slightly out of breath, and watched as Sister Kläre erected a bridge between the table and the window frame, while Bertin, kneeling on the table, carefully plugged the iron into an adaptor. For a moment, the room was plunged into darkness. He heard a voice whispering in his ear: ‘I won’t leave you in the lurch.’ When the light bulb flashed on a second later, Sister Kläre was busily arranging her washing as though nothing had happened. It was very nice of the nurse, thought Bertin, as he sat down on a stool in the corner and listened to Kroysing and Father Lochner’s talking – it was really very nice of Sister Kläre to console him and offer him her help. But she had clearly overestimated her range, to use of a favourite word of Kroysing’s. Posnanski had had to leave the matter with a representative, and by God they needed one, and he was sure to be a more powerful man than anyone Sister Kläre might be able to produce. Well, he wouldn’t agonise about it any more. The judge advocate had probably meant his divisional commander or someone else who had enough influence with Group East to reverse Herr Jansch’s cocky refusal. In any case, it was very nice to sit here freshly bathed and lice-free, to doze a little and enjoy the moment. Because the lice would get stuck into him again that night. His undeloused sleeping bag or his neighbour Lebehde or the man under him would see to that. Lice were as unavoidable as fate, and as long as you were ensconced in communal accommodation and the misery of war you couldn’t get away from them. And he mustn’t forget that Sister Kläre had asked him to write a dedication in her copy of Love at Last Sight.

Father Lochner was at the hospital to be treated for a carbuncle, an ugly deep red swelling on his neck. He’d made the difficult decision to have it lanced and he’d have to prevail on the doctors’ kindness a few more times. So, even godless doctors were doing God’s work with their dexterous hands.

Kroysing was almost irritated by the priest and his good mood. What was this outsider doing breaking in on this private hour? It was bad enough to have to share the vision of Sister Kläre with his comrades, her coming and goings with the ironing board, those duties of a maid – a maid he could regard more directly and desire more keenly now her secret had been revealed. But Father Lochner was so overjoyed to find Kroysing unhurt after all the adventures around Douaumont…

‘Unhurt!’ cried Kroysing indignantly, pointing to the thick bandages on his foot. ‘Hind paw.’ That was nothing, insisted Father Lochner, nothing at all compared to the dreadful possibilities he’d escaped. ‘Thanks,’ said Kroysing. ‘It was quite enough for me.’

Not to be deterred, Father Lochner pointed to the thousands upon thousands of men who had given their lives for the Fatherland. Kroysing had fared extremely well and now he would see the homeland again and return to his profession in one of the factories essential to the war effort… ‘Definitely,’ Kroysing nodded. ‘I can’t wait to return to my profession. My profession is being a soldier, and I’m going to transfer to the air force.’

‘Oh,’ said Father Lochner startled, that was very admirable but he had more than fulfilled his duty and should now think about himself and his future.

‘Rubbish!’ retorted Kroysing, as the others listened intently. He wasn’t talking about duty; he was talking about his own enjoyment. Surely the priest knew that he was a heathen, an avowed disciple of the religion of killing. Instead of hobbling around on the ground, he wanted to soar up into the clouds and rain avenging fire down on the heads of his enemies.

Father Lochner hung his head sadly. He had hoped Kroysing’s afflictions might have mellowed him. And his private dispute? he asked. He didn’t know if he could mention it openly?

‘My quarrel with that scoundrel Niggl? Say what you like. Everyone in this room knows about it or is a fellow sufferer. Nothing has changed, Father. I’ll hunt him down. And if he’s promoted to major soon…’

‘He’s been promoted,’ Father Lochner broke in.

‘…then he’ll be over all of us as a result of his actions.’

There was pause. Sister Kläre let the iron rest on its tripod for a moment. They all looked at him, this wild hunter, who admitted his vendetta so openly, simply pushing aside the New and Old Testaments, both of which replaced individual and clan vengeance with the rule of law and public justice. Then the iron began to steam again. Father Lochner folded his hands in resignation: in that case the matter must be left to Providence and hopefully it would turn out well for Lieutenant Kroysing. He just hoped that when the time came he’d have as peaceful an end as that little sergeant from Douaumont three days ago in the field hospital at Chaumont… Kroysing, who’d been lying down, slowly pulled himself up. ‘Do you mean my friend Sergeant Süßmann is dead?’

Yes, Father Lochner nodded. That was the name. That young sapper who guided you to the infantry position, the very same.

‘Impossible,’ groaned Kroysing hoarsely, clearing his throat. ‘He went to a training course in Brandenburg.’

But, quietly implacable, the priest insisted: he must have been sent back into the field in the meantime. Since the beginning of the year, training courses had increasingly been held in the communications zone. As though drawn by a magnet, Bertin had moved past the ironing nurse and now stood at the head of Kroysing’s bed. ‘Süßmann,’ he said simply. ‘Our little Süßmann.’

According to Father Lochner it had been an accident during grenade throwing training for recruits and had happened very quickly. One of them, an elderly man, couldn’t get to grips with the grenade, and Süßmann stepped out of cover to show him how to handle it one more time, having been assured by the future sapper that he hadn’t taken the pin out. Then as Süßmann walked towards him the man dropped the hand grenade and ran away. Immediate explosion, half of which caught Süßmann, the other the unfortunate recruit, a hireling from Mecklenburg. He died immediately, but Süßmann lasted until the evening after he was admitted to hospital and didn’t suffer much. Dr Baer, the military Rabbi, had been with him at the end. Between two morphine injections, he’d dictated a few sentences, including one for Lieutenant Kroysing. ‘Write to my parents that it was worth it and to Lieutenant Kroysing that it wasn’t. It was a swindle.’ Apart from a few wild utterances in his death throes, an exemplary soldier had gone to his final rest, and his memory would certainly be preserved by the grateful Fatherland.

Kroysing turned to Bertin. ‘Our little Süßmann,’ he repeated sadly. ‘Escaped twice from the hell of Douaumont only to be done for by some hick from Mecklenburg. And he was so sure – so sure – that death had spat him out once and for all and he’d probably outlive the Wandering Jew. No, I don’t want to hear any more today.’ And he turned to the wall.

Bertin stared down at him, arms hanging. No one was safe, and it was always the wrong ones who got it. Every minute a man was taken, and no one cared. Yes, Pelican and Sergeant Fürth had been right. There’d be nothing but rubbish left in Germany if things went on like this. And eyes full of dread, he looked round the comfortable room where the smell of ironed sheets now mingled with that of cigarettes. They all had plans for the future. He was trying to be transferred to the Lychow Division court martial, Kroysing wanted to join the air force, Lieutenant Mettner wanted to return to his study of mathematics and Lieutenant Flachsbauer wanted if possible to join the world of commerce where his father’s company was eagerly awaiting him. Sister Kläre and the priest no doubt had clear plans too, just like Pahl down the corridor, who wanted to organise strikes in Germany. So many decisions and ideas! ‘Nothing is final as long as we live,’ was how his novel ended. Existence was always uncertain. A tile could fall on your head at any moment; an electric cable might snap and kill you. In Upper Silesia a parson had been killed when the fly wheel broke loose at a pumping station, flew through the air and crashed into the roof of the parsonage, crushing the parson at his dinner. But in war such accidents became part of a malicious system that multiplied them tenfold – a hundredfold at the front. Death wasn’t unusual; survival was unusual.

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 grey: 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.

Although he was mentally focused on his wound, which was healing slowly but healing nonetheless (the skilful surgeon had folded artificially long strips of skin over the site of the operation), Pahl had been curious to meet the tall lieutenant and was delighted when Kroysing came by every day after his first visit to chew the fat with him – i.e. to have a chat. Pahl’s reputation as a thinking man had spread much more quickly in the hospital than in his company. For in hospitals people have a lot of time and few distractions. Authors could easily write novels about the conversations that take place among patients, whereas busy people usually talk to hide their thoughts and advance their aims. Kroysing wasn’t an engineer now but a patient, and he thought carefully, moving his head slowly, as he engaged with the questions that the recumbent typesetter put to him in a polite but facetious tone – very tricky questions. What, for example, did Kroysing, as an engineer, think about the fact that if he invented something while working for some company or other, the patent would not belong to him or the general public but to the company? Did he think that was reasonable? Sitting on Pahl’s bed, Kroysing the engineer did not think that was at all reasonable. He took the view that engineers around the world, though perhaps initially in one country, should band together to make sure they got a share of the profits from their inventions. However, Kroysing was under no illusions as to the viability of such lovely ideas, because it was almost impossible to get engineers to cooperate on anything as they were so competitive. That meant people had to be persuaded that they needed Kroysing the engineer as much as Kroysing the engineer needed them; it would then be possible to rely on the well-developed self-interest of those industrial lords.

It was all very entertaining – the patients in men’s ward 3 listened avidly as the little hunchback presented arguments and counter-arguments, and the tall lieutenant answered him back, glowing with pleasure. Finally, backed into a corner, the lieutenant said that he didn’t give two figs for cooperation and if a man didn’t know how to help himself then he must be left to flounder. He, personally, was not one to be discouraged, and that was the main thing. A real man was a lone wolf, as in the old saying: God helps those who help themselves, and if not there’s always the fire brigade. Whereupon Pahl had pointed out that solidarity and mutual assistance in life and death situations were an essential prerequisite for a fire brigade. Neither of them was prepared to give in, and it became increasingly clear that reason and the facts were on Pahl’s side. He was right and that was all there was to it, whereas Kroysing, snapping around him like a sheepdog, was his own argument and his own person was the best evidence he could offer for this thesis.

In the end, they laughed and agreed to continue their discussion after the war, Pahl at the head of a horde of power-hungry slaves and Kroysing as satrap of the rapacious captains of industry – to use the language of opposing newspapers. Then they’d see who was right – who was stronger and more forward-looking, and could be relied upon to replace all the human lives that had been destroyed. Kroysing wanted to bring in the military; Pahl thought the military would long since have been transformed inwardly into proletarians in uniform. And so they parted on good terms, each with much food for thought, though they didn’t show it.

Pahl’s thoughts, as he tossed from side to side turning his face to the blue sky in the window, were as always focused on the essential dilemma of how to reawaken in the engineer and his kind the sense they’d had in their youth that they mustn’t squander their gifts. How could you teach them to see beyond their education – their training to act as faithful servants to the religion of private property as manifest in all the raw materials and natural forces that had been torn from their original owners – everyone? On the horizon Pahl saw a vision of suffering humanity awaiting its freedom and felt dizzy because he wasn’t strong enough for the enormous task that awaited him at home. Because life on the breadline – cramped housing, poor food, lack of time and education, insufficient schooling, monotonous work, lack of hope and longing for the comforts of the middle classes – paralysed or perverted whatever ideas, talent and special qualities slumbered in the vast army of the exploited. Bertin had once explained to him that Christianity had triumphed because it had awakened self-awareness in women, slaves, prisoners of war and children, had unleashed and unfettered their abilities to the benefit of the community. In this, as in so many other respects, Christianity was a precursor of socialism. Would he live to see a time, 20 years after the war, when one or two liberated nations had been able to show what colossal creative forces lay within them, after this frenzy of destruction?

When Kroysing returned to the room, Sister Kläre was clearing up and Lieutenant Flachsbauer had been taken down to the massage room to try out a few simple appliances and would be gone for half an hour at least. Kroysing was bristling with tension, and the engine of his will crackled and sparked. He sat on the bed and looked at this woman sluicing the floor with a pungent solution of Lysol. ‘Well, Kläre,’ he said abruptly, ‘what’s to become of us?’

Frau Colonel Schwersenz turned her beautiful nun’s eyes on him in shock. Had she hidden her feelings so badly? ‘What can I do for the young gentleman?’ she asked in servant’s mode, mocking both of them.

He looked at her sadly. ‘Come off it,’ he said. ‘Let’s put all that nonsense to one side and look at the matter honestly. If I were a foreman and you were a maid we’d have come to an agreement long ago and we’d now be considering how and on what basis to get married. Our situation is more complicated because we’re distinguished people.’

Sister Kläre felt herself flush with fear. ‘Lie down, Lieutenant. Rest your leg and don’t say things you can’t answer for.’ At the same time, she was ashamed of this inhibited avoidance tactic.

Kroysing lay down obediently, watching her fixedly. ‘Kläre,’ he said, ‘you know how things are. There were three men in this room who loved you. One of them has trundled off, the best and weakest of them, and now sleepy old Flachsbauer may dream of you his whole life long, which will do him good as he won’t get you. I’m the one who’s either going to marry you or snuff it.’

Sister Kläre made as if to push him away. ‘You’re a blackmailer. You’re like a mad vice.’

But Kroysing shook his head: ‘I’m just telling it as it is. I’m mad about you Kläre, not just in that way but in all conceivable ways. When I think of having you beside me day and night for the next 20 years, I feel I could jump on to the ceiling and bang the walls. You know that. You’re not a coward. You’re a real woman and your heart’s in the right place. I’m not trying to blind you with romance. I’m not producing flutes and violins. I’m not trying to stroke your leg or put my hand on your breast…’

‘You’ll get a cuff round the ear if you do, Lieutenant.’

‘…but I can’t sleep for asking myself how I’ll feed us and arrange accommodation. As long as the war lasts, I have to go where GHQ sends me. At the moment I’m just an ordinary sapper lieutenant but in nine months I’ll be a famous airman – or a pile of ashes.’

Sister Kläre looked at him wide-eyed, then she closed her eyes, took two steps towards the bed, opened them again, realised she had a wet cloth in her hands, wrapped it round the scrubbing brush and finished mopping the room.

He carried on talking as she mopped, and she felt his eyes following her every movement. ‘When the war is over and we’ve both come through it, you without having caught any diseases and me without having broken my neck or my big nose – when we’re back in Germany and everyone’s celebrating victory, what can I offer you then? That buckled lad Pahl next door is no fool. What prospects does an engineer have? As a boy, I always dreamt of being a ship’s captain in the merchant navy. I thought it would be wonderful to stand on the bridge and command some great white tub from port to starboard, from the top of the mast to the bilge – to be responsible for it. Of course it never occurred to me that the captain doesn’t own a single rivet on the ship. Now I know that a captain is really a modestly paid transport engineer with few options for advancement, even if his wife can travel round the world first class. So what do I really have to offer you apart from myself? A nice four-bedroomed house in Nuremberg or Augsburg, a couple of lovely old people as in-laws and with a bit of luck a car if the company provides one? I think I’ll manage to get one.’

Sister Kläre suddenly fell back into the cockiness she’d rediscovered in the field after 15 years of marriage. ‘Really?’ she said innocently. ‘Well, that would be necessary. For without a car – I’m afraid I couldn’t be happy without a car, Lieutenant.’

Kroysing fell for it. ‘That’s just it,’ he said despondently. ‘I imagine you couldn’t be. I don’t know how you lived before you came here. People say you’re from a rich family and your husband was a staff officer. We’d have to cut right back, Kläre. Not everyone can live like that.’

Later, Sister Kläre often remembered the absurd, sweet joy that flooded her during those morning hours on the 20th of March – the calm, collected way the young man wooed her, which he seemed to find as natural as the healing gun wound in his leg.

‘It’s nice of you to acknowledge the existence of my husband, Lieutenant Kroysing.’

‘There’s divorce,’ he answered curtly.

‘And there are Catholics,’ she said in the same tone.

Kroysing sat on the bed and peered at her. ‘Kläre,’ he said hoarsely, ‘you’re not going to tell me there can’t be anything between us because you’ve been married for a few years.’

‘A few years!’ said Sister Kläre. ‘Fifteen years!’ And that numeral inspired her to think of all the terrible difficulties of the situation. ‘You don’t just separate after that long because you’ve found someone younger who wants you. You’ve had a life together, and that deserves respect and consideration and a place in your heart. I’m not some kind of hussy who skips from bed to bed with no baggage. No, my dear friend, there’s a lot to think about, a lot of dissenting voices that must be considered, a lots of barriers. And if I’m to take your proposal seriously—’

‘Kläre,’ he cried, standing up on one leg with his injured leg bent under him, supporting himself on the bed with one hand and reaching out to her with the other.

With a happy but wistful laugh, she backed towards the door. ‘I’ll have to think about it,’ she said firmly.

‘I’m sick of thinking,’ he cried almost angrily. ‘First she wanted to think about whether she could make a telephone call and save my friend, and now she wants to think about whether she can end her marriage and marry me. Well, my extremely thoughtful lady, I believe in acting quickly. If you’re prepared to marry me, phone the crown prince before midnight tonight. If you don’t want me, all you have to do is say tonight that you’d prefer to phone him in the morning. Agreed?’

She nodded and was about to repeat his final word, but Kroysing made two sudden hops across the room on his good leg, wrapped her in his long arms and pressed his mouth to her parted lips, felt her go soft against his chest then stiffen, let her go and said: ‘To have is to hold,’ and hopped back to the bed like a long-legged grasshopper. She took her bucket and scrubbing brush and left the room without a word, like a pretty housemaid who’s just been kissed. Kroysing felt his heart hammering against his ribs. She’ll telephone, he thought triumphantly. She’ll telephone tonight and her name will be Frau Kroysing as surely as mine is Herr Kroysing. Immediately afterwards it occurred to him that she’d definitely ask Father Lochner’s advice. He’d have to get the priest on his side. He could not deny that Niggl had become completely irrelevant to him in that moment. He laughed inwardly. It would pain him, but if Sister Kläre married him and Father Lochner helped her to get her present marriage dissolved he’d abandon his vendetta against Niggl.

In a fairly large field hospital, the staff working to relieve human suffering and return wounded men to full strength are kept fully occupied in the morning. That underlying reality doesn’t change whether you view the process as a way of rehabilitating slaves to work and fight for the ruling class, as Pahl did, or a way of summoning all Germany’s strength in the battle for her very existence, as Kroysing did. The sometimes terrible ceremony of changing bandages, with its groans, clenched teeth and curses, its snarling and coaxing, passed on, which is to say it moved from room to room. Nurses carried buckets of festering wood pulp out to be burnt. Sometimes, if the healing process had gone wrong and there was excessive granulation in the wound rather than firm, new flesh, cauterisation was required. Then the silver nitrate probe or small, sharp scrapers were brought out, and great suffering ensued. Other, more fortunate men toiled in the gym where their injured limbs were gradually restored to the purposes for which nature intended them through exercise. Once it has realised its potential, human material, that baffling, growing, animate cell tissue, is doomed to rejoin the Earth’s surface – that underlying impulse is inherent in its target form, just as butterflies, flies and bees are driven to fertilise flowers. Sometimes it seemed as though the planet itself wanted to be stimulated to preordained levels of performance – a frenzy of raw materials and forces – so it might offer ever-improving living conditions to rational beings. Perhaps that was why it incited the nearly two billion cells called humanity to excessive activity and conflict. It wanted to spur the higher, more rational, more forward-looking ones on, while provoking resistance from the lower, wilder, more instinctive ones, so as to squeeze as much as possible in the way of inventions, discoveries and harvests from both. Aviation, chemistry, medical science, warfare – all had advanced in leaps and bounds. New means of communication had brought communities together that previously had hardly known of each other’s existence. Biased social systems had come crashing down, and those who did not understand how to deploy all available forces within their borders in the struggle for existence were doomed to defeat, whatever the existing privileged classes might say. Services rendered could always be repaid with ingratitude, promises could be turned around and chartered rights rescinded. Why not? People did not have a very well developed sense of civilised behaviour. They barely understood what it was for. It was easier to appreciate technology. It helped with killing.

On this basis, the engineer and the priest understood each other very well. Each considered the other to be the champion of a weaker cause. Happily, their meeting took place in an atmosphere of vague agreement that members of the global household had an important duty to respect the individual. For they knew that nature only works in species, kinds, races and large groups; the requirement placed on men by nature to respect the individual was thus all the greater. For as it battled to enrich its homeland, humanity had need of individuals as if they were the purpose of earthly fertility and the battle for existence. And while the engineer and the priest conducted their cheerful argument, the medical officer sat with some wounded man who had been put in special rooms to test whether water promoted natural healing. The water did help. Man’s fluid composition seemed to respond gratefully to it. Out in the courtyard, flocks of white and tan chickens cackled, pecked and fluttered, commanded by a couple of cocks, pigs grunted by a row of sties, and enormous long-haired Belgian rabbits with soft eyes and fur hopped about. March light sparkled down on them, and their animal hearts thrilled with joy. They did not divine their purpose, which would bring their joyful existence to an end, or that it was only because of that purpose that they existed in the first place. In certain rooms, wet laundry was being rubbed down on corrugated iron; in others, food was being cooked for several hundred people. A ruddy-faced matron bent over a ledger and noted down figures. A horse-drawn wagon panted up the hill, bringing tinned food, ration bread and the post in a large sack. That created a lot work; it had to be sorted, distributed and read – but it also radiated healing. Pahl the typesetter received a letter, which he read with a strange smile. His application was already in progress and would doubtless be successful. His unit, the replacement ASC battalion in Küstrin, had emerged from obscurity. Once it had established what pension the grateful Fatherland owed him, it was going to order that he be sent home, formally and solemnly discharged, transferred back to civilian life and his profession. As a typesetter doesn’t exactly need his toe, the compensation for his wound wouldn’t be very high; nonetheless, Pahl was now a pensioner, and so there was a limit to how bad things could get. The soldiers sang that this campaign was no express train, but for him it had come to a halt. For the others it would rattle cheerfully on. It had been as little detained by the Kaiser’s peace initiative as by President Wilson’s messages or Pope Benedict XV’s prayers – this capitalist war about the redistribution of world markets. You couldn’t say that the capitalists had started it, but they had made the aristocratic land-owning class in the three empires into masters of a military machine so strong that once it had been set in motion it could only come to a standstill when it had extinguished them and itself. Capitalists couldn’t make peace. Neither could feudal states. They paid for it with their own collapse. Only nations could make peace, when the blessings of a lost war had made enough of an impression on them. The Russians would prove that.

Lieutenant Flachsbauer also received a letter, read it, sighed and placed it under his pillow. So did Lieutenant Kroysing. His letter was from his mother, as his father had delegated letter writing to her some time ago. She was looking forward to him being transferred to a Nuremberg hospital and asked him to hurry the process along. She was having nightmares and clung to every bit of news from him. She felt that he would only be safe from the murderous claws of war when he was in her arms. Kroysing frowned: people at home really knew how to lay it on thick. Claws of war! That kind of talk should be left to washerwomen. He wondered what exactly she thought was going to happen to him here. The Verdun front had lost its importance, and there had been no more talk of long-range guns from the Frogs. And the Red Cross flew its flag and had painted a cross on the roof to prevent air attacks. He decided he’d better wait to tell his parents about his transfer to the air force in person when he had some proper leave.

‘We’re counting on you remaining in Germany from now on, my beloved child, and returning to your profession if possible, hopefully somewhere very nearby. We both very much regret that we weren’t always close before the war. Perhaps that was just part of your growing up, but now, darling boy, now, my dear lanky Hardi, you must remember that you are our only child and help us to take some joy in life again. A family home is only a family home if the children call it home. And we’ve already had to part with our dear Christel. I have to confess that I’m not a heroic mother. I could weep and weep over your dear, kind, talented brother, just as I would have wept inconsolably if it had been you and our tall, proud, manly Hardi were never to dash up our steps again. I don’t cry because it’s useless and it just breaks your father’s heart, and he can’t do anything to help me. If the Fatherland really needs further sacrifices, then other fathers and mothers will have to make them because we have suffered enough. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever lift a grandchild from its crib – that’s the only real joy left to an old woman like me. Yes, thought Kroysing, a grandchild would give her a new lease of life. He should write to her and say that. He’d been right to offer Niggl’s scalp to Father Lochner as they philosophised together earlier – provided Lochner agreed to help with certain difficulties that Sister Kläre would tell him about after dinner. It was a fair exchange, and Lochner seemed to acknowledge that.

And so he replied to his mother immediately. He felt unusually warm towards her. The resentment she’d alluded to was completely forgotten. Tender, cheerful words poured from him as he bent uncomfortably over the table and wrote his forces letter in bold handwriting – his last.