The Young Lions

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

THE door opened and Gretchen Hardenburg stood there in a grey wrap.

"Yes?" she said, opening the door only part way and peering out. "What is it?"

"Hello," Christian said, smiling. "I've just arrived in Berlin."

Gretchen opened the door a little more widely and looked closely at him. After a perceptible moment, during which she looked at his shoulder-straps, a light of recognition crossed her face. "Ah," she said. "The Sergeant. Welcome." She opened the door, but before Christian could kiss her, she extended her hand. They shook hands. Her hand was bony and seemed to be shaken by some slight ague.

"For the moment," she apologized, "the light in the hall… And, you've changed." She stepped back and looked at him critically. "You've lost so much weight. And your colour…"

"I had jaundice," Christian said shortly. He hated his colour himself, and didn't like people to remark about it. This was not how he had imagined the first minute with Gretchen, caught at the door this way, in a sharp discussion of his unpleasant complexion. "Malaria and jaundice. That's how I got to Berlin. Sick leave. I've just got off the train. This is the first place I've been…"

"How flattering," Gretchen said, automatically pushing her hair, which was uncombed, back from her face. "Very nice of you to come."

"Aren't you going to ask me in?" Christian said. Begging again, he thought bitterly, as soon as I lay eyes on her.

"Oh, I'm so sorry." Gretchen laughed shrilly. "I was asleep, and I suppose I'm still dazed. Of course, of course, come in…"

She closed the door behind him and put her hand familiarly on his arm, pressing it firmly. It may still be all right, Christian thought, as he went into the well-remembered room; perhaps she was surprised in the beginning and now she's getting over it.

Once in the living-room he made a move towards her, but she slipped away and lit a cigarette and sat down.

"Sit down, sit down," she said. "My pretty Sergeant. I often wondered what had happened to you."

"I wrote," Christian said, seating himself stiffly. "I wrote again and again. You never answered."

"Letters…" Gretchen made a face and waved her cigarette.

"One simply doesn't have the time. I always mean to… And then, finally, I burn them, it is just impossible. I loved your letters, though, I really did; it was awful what they did to you in the Ukraine, wasn't it?"

"I was not in the Ukraine," Christian said soberly. "I was in Africa and Italy."

"Of course, of course," Gretchen said without embarrassment.

"We're doing very well in Italy, aren't we? very well indeed. It is the one really bright spot."

Christian wondered how Italy could seem bright from any vantage point at all, but he did not speak. He watched Gretchen narrowly as she talked. She looked much older, especially in the untidy grey dressing-gown, and her eyes were yellowed and pouchy, her hair dead, her movements, which before had been youthfully energetic, now neurotic, overcharged, quivering.

"I envy you being in Italy," she was saying. "Berlin is getting impossible. Impossible to keep warm, impossible to sleep at night, raids almost every night, impossible to get from place to place. I tried to get sent to Italy, merely to keep warm…" She laughed, and there was something whining in her laugh. "I really need a holiday," she hurried on. "You have no idea how hard we work and under what conditions. Often I tell the man who is the head of my bureau, if the soldiers had to fight under conditions like this, they would go on strike, I tell him to his face…"

Marvellous, thought Christian, she is boring me.

"Oh," said Gretchen, "I honestly do remember. My husband's Company. That's it. The black lace. It was stolen last summer. You have no idea how dishonest people have become in Berlin; you have to watch every cleaning-woman like a hawk…"

Garrulous, too, Christian thought, coldly making the additions to the damning account.

"I shouldn't talk like this to a soldier home from the front," Gretchen said. "All the newspapers keep saying how brave everyone is in Berlin, how they suffer without a word, but there'd be no use hiding anything from you; the minute you went out in the street you'd hear everyone complaining. Did you bring anything with you from Italy?"

"What?" Christian asked, puzzled.

"Something to eat," Gretchen said. "So many of the men come back with cheese or that wonderful Italian ham, and I thought perhaps you…" She smiled coquettishly at him and leaned forward, very intimately, her dressing-gown falling open a little, revealing the line of her breasts.

"No," said Christian shortly. "I didn't bring back anything except my jaundice."

He felt tired and a little lost. All his plans for the week in Berlin had been centred upon Gretchen, and now…

"It's not that we don't get enough to eat," Gretchen said officially, "but it's just that the variety…"

Oh, God, Christian mourned within him, here two minutes and we are discussing diet!

"Tell me," he said abruptly, "have you heard from your husband?"

"My husband," Gretchen said, checking herself, as though she regretted giving up the subject of food. "Oh. He killed himself."

"What?"

"He killed himself," Gretchen said brightly. "With a pocket knife."

"It's not possible," Christian said, because it did not seem real that all that fierce, ordered energy, that intricate, cold, reasonable strength could have been self-destroyed. "He had so many plans…"

"I know about his plans," Gretchen said aggrievedly. "He wanted to come back here. He sent me his picture. How he ever got anyone to take a picture of that face I honestly don't know. He regained the sight of one eye and suddenly decided he wanted to come back and live with me. You have no idea what he looked like." She shuddered visibly. "A man must be insane to send his wife a picture like that. I would understand, he wrote, I would be strong enough. He was queer enough to begin with, but without a face… There are some limits, after all, even in a war. Horror has a proper place in life, he wrote, and we must all be able to bear it…"

"Yes," said Christian. "I remember."

"Oh," said Gretchen, "I suppose he told you some of it, too."

"Yes," said Christian.

"Well," Gretchen said, petulantly, "I wrote him a most tactful letter. I worked at it for a whole evening. I told him he would find it uncomfortable here, he would be better looked after in an Army hospital, at least until they did something more with his face… although, to tell you the truth, there was nothing to be done, it was no face at all, things like that really shouldn't be permitted, but the letter was extremely tactful…"

"Have you the picture?" Christian asked suddenly.

Gretchen looked at him strangely. She pulled the wrap closer around her. "Yes," she said, "I have it."

"I can't understand," Gretchen said, standing up and going over to the desk against the far wall, "why anyone would want to look at it." She rummaged nervously through two of the desk drawers, then brought out a small photograph. She glanced at it briefly, then handed it to Christian. "There it is," she said. "As though there aren't enough things to frighten a person these days…"

Christian looked at the photograph. One bright, crooked eye stared coldly and imperiously out of the nameless wounded flesh, over the tight collar of the uniform.

"May I have this?" Christian asked.

"You people are getting queerer and queerer these days," Gretchen said shrilly. "Sometimes I have the feeling you all ought to be locked up, really I do."

"May I have it?" Christian repeated, staring down at it.

"I suppose so." Gretchen shrugged. "It doesn't do me any good."

"I was very attached to him," Christian said. "I owe a great deal to him. He taught me more than anyone else I ever knew. He was a giant, a true giant."

"Don't think, Sergeant," Gretchen said quickly, "that I wasn't fond of him. Because I was. Deeply fond of him. But I prefer remembering him like this…" She picked up from the table the silver-framed photograph of Hardenburg, handsome and stern in his cap, and touched it sentimentally. "This was taken the first month we were married and I think he'd want me to remember him like that."

There was the turning of a key in the door, and Gretchen twitched nervously and tied the cord around her robe more tightly. "I'm afraid, Sergeant," she said hurriedly, "that you'll have to go now. I'm busy at the moment and…"

A large, heavy-framed woman in a black coat came into the room. She had iron-grey hair, brushed severely back from her forehead, and small, cold eyes behind steel glasses. She glanced once at Christian.

"Good evening, Gretchen," she said. "Aren't you dressed yet? You know, we're going out for dinner."

"I've had company," Gretchen said. "A Sergeant from my husband's old Company."

"Yes?" The woman's voice had a rising note of cold inquiry. She faced Christian heavily.

"Sergeant… Sergeant…" Gretchen's voice hesitated. "I'm terribly sorry, but I don't remember your name."

I would like to kill her, thought Christian, standing facing the middle-aged woman, the photograph of Hardenburg still in his hand. "Diestl," he said flatly. "Christian Diestl."

"Sergeant Diestl, Mademoiselle Giguet."

Christian nodded at the woman. She acknowledged the greeting with a brief downward flicker of her eyes.

"Mademoiselle Giguet is from Paris," Gretchen said nervously. "She is working for us in the Ministry. She is living with me until she can find an apartment. She's very important, aren't you, darling?" Gretchen giggled at the end of her sentence.

The woman ignored her. She began stripping her gloves off her square, powerful hands. "Forgive me," she said. "I must have a bath. Is there hot water?"

"Lukewarm," said Gretchen.

"Good enough." The square, heavy figure disappeared into the bedroom.

"She's very intellectual." Gretchen did not look at Christian.

"You'd be amazed how they come to her for advice at the Ministry."

Christian picked up his cap. "I must go now," he said.

"Thank you for the photograph. Goodbye."

"Goodbye," Gretchen said, pulling nervously at the collar of her wrap. "Just slam the, door. The lock is automatic."