Innocent Soldier (9780545355698) (12 page)

“I don’t want my lieutenant to die!” I quietly beg the Great One behind the birches and the infinite sky above. Maybe it helps. I have fared well with it in the past.

Did we come from here or from there? No idea. This Russia looks the same all over. Best thing is to head for the barking cannon. Stands to reason. Where there’s a battle, there’ll also be an army.

If only it weren’t so cold. We alternate between running and walking. The chill creeps up out of the ground like cold breath.

In Russia, a man isn’t made for naked living.

There’s no point. Konrad Klara can’t go any farther. My blood seems to be freezing too. We’ve gone as far as we can. We have to warm ourselves up now, in a hurry.

But how, without a fire?

There’s a little wood ahead of us.

“We’ll camp in there.”

“I’m freezing,” trembles Konrad Klara.

“You won’t freeze that quickly, Your Wellborn.”

“Don’t call me that always,” he says crossly.

The early evening has no stars. It doesn’t need any. The battle is still raging in the distance and lights up the whole eastern half of the sky. The armies are making their own light.

“Damned war,” I curse. Konrad Klara doesn’t contradict me. Instead, coughing hoarsely, he agrees, “Damned war,” and he shakes so hard his skin wrinkles.

I look around in the little wood. Not a soul in there. It’s safe to spend the night. I break off soft branches, pile old leaves into a heap on top of them, pull moss off the ground and layer it over the leaves. A few more branches on top to keep the whole thing in place. And then we slip under the little hill.

Konrad Klara continues to chatter a while longer. But before long he calms himself. His breathing comes regularly. We get warm in our little earth tent. We’ll survive the night.

The morning is quiet. No more sounds of the battle for Moscow. It seems to be over. The sun climbs out of a thick mist. It lights us with feeble autumn rays. The smoke from yesterday’s battle has robbed it of most of its strength. Even so, it has a little warmth left over for Konrad Klara and me. Hunger and thirst soon get us going.

No one to be seen. All morning not a soul. Once, a couple of red-clad Cossacks gallop past a long way off.
Just in case, we press ourselves down to the ground. We’re not spotted. Who knows what Cossacks would do to a couple of naked enemies?

The battle really does seem to be over. The thunder from the cannons has completely stopped.

Hunger scratches at our stomachs. I’m ready to eat grass. The thirst is still worse. But we don’t drink anything. We’ve already experienced the consequences of doing that.

Late in the afternoon, we come to a village. I want to try to steal a couple of pairs of pants, and maybe something to eat and drink as well. Konrad Klara is opposed to stealing, but we both need something to wear. The door of the first house is bolted. The second likewise, it’s not possible to open any of the doors. I look for a tool with which to try and force one open. Just in time, I spot the group of men armed with clubs. They’re waiting for me in the next house. I hurriedly walk away. After a few yards, I start running.

How are we going to get hold of some trousers? If only we had money or something to offer in exchange!

“Oh, Adam Neve,” Konrad Klara says. “Don’t take it so hard. In the Bible, Adam and Eve were both naked as well. We shall just have to get used to it.” After a while, he adds: “If only it were a bit warmer.” And he coughs some more.

Konrad Klara won’t be able to stand much more of this naked living. He cools down so quickly. I keep thinking of the wheezing breath of the stable boy from Morbach.

Toward evening, we reach the edge of the great plain. A fine peaceful sunset lies over the country. At last we’ve reached our objective. We’ve managed to rendezvous with the army again. In the distance in front of us, there are soldiers covering a hill. They’re lying all over the slope, horses, too. Hundreds, thousands? Are they resting from the battle, or are they waiting for the next one to begin?

Cautiously, we approach them. We feel ashamed on account of our nakedness. But the men don’t pay us any attention. The whole area smells terrible.

What regiments do they belong to? Look at the uniforms!

“Ours?” Konrad Klara and I wonder, at exactly the same moment.

But we don’t see any Wurttemburgers. Only French, Westphalians, Prussians, and …

“Look, there, Adam Neve. Those are Russians, aren’t they?”

“Russians?”

“Beyond a doubt! Russian foot soldiers.”

What are Russians doing in the midst of Napoleon’s army?

“They’re all dead!” screams Konrad Klara.

And then I notice bloodied bodies, severed arms, heads blown off by cannonballs. Beside them, a ditch. Lots of arms and legs and whole bodies lying in it. Probably a doctor was working on them until a few moments ago. I feel chilled to the bone, and then a hot sweat comes over me. I can hardly speak.

“Oh, Konrad Klara,” I manage to say. “We’re on the site of yesterdays battle.”

Konrad Klara is shaking from top to toe.

“So many,” he groans.

He suddenly leans against me. He presses his face against my bare chest, and stands there a while, without moving. Then he leaps away.

Is he ashamed?

“Damned war!” shouts the young Lieutenant Count Lammersdorf.

I go up to him and drag him away from the corpses. The battlefield is too gruesome. Up on the hill, something is moving. Wolves are nosing around.

How many young men have been slaughtered here? Have all these soldiers let themselves be shot for the sake of Napoleon? Now they’re lying peaceably among the enemy, next to them and on top of them. Apparently, not everyone is dead. There’s moaning and wailing and screaming coming from a bloodied bundle. We can do nothing. What could we do? Away from this place. These
scenes mustn’t dig too deeply into our memories. Otherwise they will remain with us as long as we live.

Amazing. In spite of the thousands of dead bodies all around me, I have a dreadful idea. There are so many trousers lying here, some bloody, some clean. Depending on whether the soldiers were shot in their upper or lower halves. All I need to do is take them away from a dead man. Simple.

Then I suddenly feel my belly heave. I sit down on an empty spot on the battlefield and vomit up half my stomach.

For his part, Konrad Klara can hardly walk, but he helps get me back on my feet.

Bare and naked we stumble about among the mutilated heroes.

I narrow my eyes to the merest slit. So that I don’t see everything. I’m only out for suitable trousers. Most of them are no use at all. They are slashed, holed, or sodden with blood. But here’s a pair that might do for my lieutenant. Their wearer has been shot in the chest. The trousers didn’t take any damage. Now’s not the time to hang around. Yes or no. Stay naked or rob the dead. I drop to my knees in front of the dead soldier, and pull at his trousers. I’m in a hurry. I want it to be over. Fortunately, it’s pretty dark. That way I can’t see the dead man’s face. The trousers are fashionably tight. I can’t get them
over the shoes. So shoes off, too. They are good shoes. They might fit me. I try them on. They’re still warm. Why warm? The soldier twitches. He’s alive.

My head spins and everything goes black. I throw the shoes down and crawl away.

All around, it’s once again a chilly night. I can’t take much more. I’m freezing to death. Hunger. And thirst. Life is already making a large detour around me. And Konrad Klara is incapable of anything except shaking. He’s stopped speaking and is just staring into space. I wonder what’s to see there? The end? But before my end, I’d rather crawl up to a filthy hole and drink. Enough of this torture.

The dead soldiers on the hill and the severed arms and legs disappear in the darkness. But there are stirrings of life out there. Creeping shadows. Those are wolves. I fear for Konrad Klara. I sit right close to him and warm him a little. And he me. It makes barely any difference. Neither of us has any warmth to share, we’re both half frozen. And the wolves are coming nearer. I see glittering eyes, quite close now.

Soon it will all be over. I cling on to Konrad Klara.

A torch shines in my face.

“Here’s another survivor.” I hear someone shouting above me. “And another one.”

“Isn’t it an outrage,” says someone else. “They stole the uniforms off their backs. They’re half frozen to death.”

I am wrapped in a coat and carried off. Slowly, I warm up again. Someone has set me down beside a large fire. Konrad Klara is lying next to me.

Suddenly, I want to live again.

Later on, we are brought hot broth from a large cauldron. Or maybe it’s just herb tea. I don’t care. Anything would taste wonderful to me. But the drink has a miraculous effect. My thirst is gone, my hunger’s gone. Konrad Klara is lying stretched out in front of the fire. I think he’s even smiling.

Two days later, we’re both up and about, the lieutenant and me, his servant. A sergeant has been instructed by the colonel to get us both some uniforms. Never mind which. Soldiers can’t run around naked under someone else’s borrowed overcoat, after all. We’ve both been found uniforms that befit our rank. Konrad Klara has become a Portuguese lieutenant, while I am now a French private. I suppose there didn’t happen to be any Wurttemburg tunics available. It wouldn’t matter so much with the pants. Pants are pants. But the caps and helmets and insignia, the sashes across the breast and all the detail of a uniform, all that makes a difference. Neither uniform is exactly new. Soiled and grubby, to be precise. My French tunic has a scorch mark on the left shoulder, and I can only bring myself to slip into the trousers if I look the other way, or better, if it’s completely dark. I would never
entrust my legs and behind to such filthy quarters under any other circumstances. Still, the nasty things are better than nothing at all, because it’s true that naked soldiers freeze faster than their uniformed fellows. I have the suspicion that our new gear was taken off dead men. On the back of the Portuguese tunic my lieutenant wears there’s a dark round bullet hole. The hole is fringed with marks of gunpowder scorch and dried blood. The Portuguese lieutenant must have been shot from behind.

Of our once proud regiment of mounted Jagers, all that remains is a feeble company of more dead than alive cavalrymen and a few spindly nags.

Apparently, there’s also a shortage of servants in the army. An elderly major insists he wants me in his service.

No, please, not for all the tea in China! I’m terrified. Then I would have to trade in my wellborn lieutenant. Unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do about it. Turn down the major? That would be insubordination, and I’d be shot for it. Now it all comes down to what Konrad Klara says.

“I’m not going to surrender my servant, the cavalryman Georg Bayh,” says Lieutenant Count Lammersdorf “Not under any circumstances!” It would take an express command, he tells the major, and even then he might for the first time in his life have the pleasure of disobeying.

I’m so happy. I could fling my arms around the
lieutenants neck. Of course, I do no such thing, because between an officer and his servant, that’s out of the question. The world would end first.

The major is sore. He says he’s a count himself, and furthermore a long-serving senior officer decorated with the Croix d’Honneur, whose own servant had his head split open by a Cossack the day before yesterday at the battle of Borodino, leaving him short, and there wasn’t a single respectable servant in the whole regiment, except for the aforementioned cavalryman Bayh, who, in the natural order of things, should be with the senior officer, and not with some little baby officer who was still wet behind the ears.

There is a scene between the major and the lieutenant Finally, the youngest lieutenant in the Wurttemburg army gets to have his way. The colonel is his uncle, after all, and moreover, a sensible man. He decides the argument by not deciding it. No one gets the servant. Which again isn’t quite true, because everything is left more or less as it was. The colonel, after a brief word with the major general, promotes me to corporal. On account of particular bravery on several occasions, and with immediate effect. As a corporal, I can’t be anyone’s servant, neither a lieutenant’s, nor a long-serving major’s.

Clever. Konrad Klara and I continue to ride together in the regiment, not far behind the colonel. We’re pleased;
the major is annoyed. Another one we both need to keep an eye on.

The war goes on.

Most of the regiments horses are lying on the side of the road somewhere, on a battlefield, or they’ve run off or been stolen, or they’ve wound up roasted over a campfire and eaten. I could weep when I remember the proud condition of the regiment as we moved out of Ludwigsburg, barely six months ago. And now! All gone.

Of course, the regiment has managed to pick up a few new horses. But they’re just puny little things. I’m sitting on one, a little steppe pony. It’s unkempt, short-legged, and shaggy. Probably used to be a Cossack or Bashkir mount before. It’s not much to look at, and a rider with long legs would have to keep pace with his feet, or else brake with them. But I’m still lucky in my horse. He’s so small that no one wants him to begin with. He doesn’t exactly look cut out for a cavalry regiment. Something so puny. But he’s a plucky little devil. If I show him the whip, he turns into a giant eagle and skims over the ground. He’s got a good heart too. After the first day together, we’re agreed, the little steppe pony and I: We belong together.

Konrad Klara has been given a bigger horse, but he has much more trouble with it. Maybe it’s sensed that he doesn’t like it. Of course, it’s nothing like the noble
Arab that he is used to riding. I’m sure the animal can sense his aversion.

We are caught out by the Russians. They are firing down at us from up on a hill. Our regiment has walked into an ambush, as onto a plate. The horsemen scatter. They melt away before the cunning bombardment. The colonel doesn’t like that at all. He observes the situation for a while. Then he gets into a rage, and when he gets into a rage, he’s a man transformed. He turns his horse around and makes for the cannon. His decrepit regiment follows him. Eighty rickety untrained steppe ponies, with famished, sickly riders clinging to their backs. At their head, the colonel gallops straight at the enemy cannon. By the time the heavy cylinders can be pointed at the attackers, it’s too late, and they’ve been cut to ribbons. It’s the first time I’ve used my saber in anger. Each time I bring it down, I look the other way. So I don’t have to see any of the faces. A face might easily stick itself in my brain, and maybe I’d never get rid of it. Then I’d have to think of it, and ask myself why I had to chop at that particular human being.