The Bloody Road to Death (42 page)

‘
My
Führer?’ asks Heide, threateningly, and with slitted eyes. ‘Your Führer too I hope, Herr Feldwebel?’

The Old Man looks at him wickedly.

‘
You
voted him to power.
I
didn’t!’

‘It will be interesting to hear what the NSFO has to say to this,’ answers Heide, and begins to whittle viciously at a twig.

Porta cuts thick slices from a long Russian loaf. We toast it at a small fire and cover it with preserved tomatoes and garlic It tastes wonderful.

‘This was Red Spain’s secret weapon during the civil war,’ says Barcelona, taking a huge mouthful.

‘That’s why they bloody lost,’ laughs Porta.

The moon is high when we leave. Its light shimmers like silk through the leaves.

A dog barks in the distance and the fur rises on Rasputin’s neck. He is, as usual, in the lead, together with Porta.

Strangely there are no blockades at all outside the town. Perhaps they cannot imagine the possibility of an attack. There are not even police patrols in the streets. All breathes peace and quiet.

In a side-street a party of soldiers sit singing with their girlfriends.

We march to attention and give the eyes right to a passing major. It is not difficult for us to imitate Russian soldiers. Their service regulations and drill are a true copy of our own. The same kicking goose-step, the same swing of the arm up and across the belt buckle.

Porta notices two personnel trucks standing parked in a yard.

‘Let’s commandeer those waggons,’ he suggests in a whisper, ‘they’ll give us a quicker getaway when we’ve picked up the meat course!’

Tiny tiptoes closer and takes a look into the yard.

‘There’s only two ‘alf-asleep bleeders in there,’ he whispers. ‘We can
’ave
them in two shakes of a lamb’s tail!’

‘Right then,’ nods the Old Man, ‘take ’em, but no noise!’

Two seconds later the two Supply Corps men are dead,
strangled. We throw the bodies into a well. We push the lorries out of the yard and only start them when they are out on the street.

At breakneck speed we flash through the narrow street. Nobody takes any notice of us. That is the way Russians drive. Suddenly we find ourselves inside a large barracks. Some sentries scream at us as we roar back out through the gates.

‘
Job tvojemadj
!’ Porta screams back at them.

We turn into a narrow cul-de-sac in which there is a prison.

An NKVD man looks pleased. He thinks we are bringing prisoners, but we have to disappoint him.

‘What’s your destination?’ he asks, sourly.

‘
Vojenkom
Oltyn,’ answers Porta. ‘Could you tell us how to get there, mate?’

The green-capped NKVD man comes right up to the leading truck.

‘That’s a hell of a dialect you’ve got there. Where are you from? Not Tiflis at any rate.’

‘Karelia,’ laughs Porta, cheekily. ‘Me mother was a Finnish whore and me dad a Russian elk!’

‘You
look
it, mate,’ laughs the NKVD guard and tells us the way to the chìteau.

‘What the ’ell was it, now, that bloody password was for tonight?’ asks Porta, taking a chance. ‘Us Karelian sons of ’ores don’t remember so good.’

‘
Tarakan
¹⁵
and you answer
Papojka
¹⁶
.

‘Yes, that’s it,’ chuckles Porta. ‘Sounds good don’t it? Are there a lot of cockroaches here since you use ’em for a password?’

‘No,’ answers the NKVD man, ‘nor parties neither!’ He offers a packet of Papyros.

Porta hands him his water bottle. He takes a healthy swig of the vodka it contains.

We back out of the blind alley and soon afterwards we have parked the trucks under cover of some large lilacs in the park surrounding the castle.

Porta swings his
kalashnikov
over his shoulder, pulls the
round Russian steel helmet down over his eyes, and saunters aimlessly towards a soldier who is standing close to the steps up to the castle. Heide and the Legionnaire sneak along the wall to get behind the sentry. He has the whole of his attention fixed on Porta, who comes dancing towards him over the open ground singing softly:

Sonce nysenko
¹⁷
spischu do tebe,
wetschir blysenko,
letschu do tebe . . .

He kicks at a fir cone, dribbles it like a footballer, and shoots it at the sentry who traps it smartly and passes it back. Then he is dead. A few flustered jerks of arms and legs. The Legionnaire tightens the wire a little more. They drag the body into the rhododendrons, empty the pockets, and take whatever they have a use for.

‘Idiots,’ sighs the Legionnaire. ‘As soon as they are out of earshot of the front line they think there is no danger any more, and wander about like so much poultry in a wired-in yard.
G est la guerre
!’

Porta takes the place of the dead sentry, but keeps in the shadows, in case somebody should come by who knows the Russian.

A clock chimes the hour, sonorously, from its tower, and plays a little tune.

A group of officers comes noisily laughing from the château-One of them trips and tumbles down the steps.

‘Oh, oh, Nikolajewitsch, can’t you take
tovaritsck
Oltyn’s champagne?’

Porta shoulders his Mpi and brings his heels together.

A fat officer with a green pelisse over his shoulder snaps a finger carelessly at the peak of his cap. A cloud of schnapps and garlic surrounds the group, as they disappear, singing drunk-enly, over towards a long building.

‘Drunk pigs,
untermensch
,’ mutters Heide, contemptuously.

He is lying under one of the trucks with his LMG ready.

Porta pulls an apple from a tree and crunches it noisily.

‘He’s crazy,’ whispers the Old Man, ‘makes as much noise as a horse eating a frozen turnip.’

Four women in Red Army uniform come giggling out of the club. One of them pulls up her skirt and there is a merry splashing.

‘’Oly Mother of Kazan, Jesus Christ Almighty,’ cries Tiny in a whisper. ‘Guncunt! Let’s take ’em along with the bleedin’
Hromoj
!’

The girls stop by Porta and dance teasingly around him. They promise him all sorts of good things if he will come over to them when the guard is changed.

‘He’d better not try,’ mutters the Old Man, fearfully.

‘Jesus,’ groans Tiny, as one of the girls slips her hand between Porta’s legs and lets out a scream of delight, ‘shell’ole ’ores!’

‘They could do with a car in the garage,’ mumbles Barcelona.

Some officers come out of the club, and the girls leave hurriedly. They have a dog with them. It stops and looks in our direction, sniffing the air, and begins to growl.

Rasputin, who is sitting in the cabin of one of the trucks, begins to hop up and down. The springs creak. He shows his teeth at the dog, which runs a little way towards us.

A sharp voice calls it back.

One of the officers looks closely at Porta as he passes him, and orders him to get a haircut. Russian soldiers are clipped close to the head.

We release our safety catches, but the officer goes on without further comment.

‘Hell,’ groans the Old Man. ‘I can’t take much more of this!’

‘Excitin’, ain’t it?’ says Tiny taking a deep breath. ’Amazin to think, ain’t it, ’ere we are lying right in the bleedin’ middle of ol’ Ivan’s lair. Close enough to spit in ’is bleedin’ eye, if we wanted!’

‘They’d shit bricks if they knew we were here,’ grins Gregor, unworriedly.

‘’Ow long we gonna ’ang around ’ere, anyway?’ asks Tiny, impatiently.

‘If it was
me
as ’ad the section I’d be in there an’ ’ave the bleedin’ meat out an’ off.’

‘Yes, try that kind o’ shit and
you’d
be off, with an entire division hanging on to your arse,’ hisses the Old man, pressing tobacco viciously into his silver-lidded pipe.

The wind gets stronger. Clouds cover the moon and the darkness becomes complete.

‘The German God is with us,’ whispers Barcelona, cheer-ingly.

‘Too right He is. It says so on our belt-buckles,’ laughs Buffalo.

Another noisy group of officers comes clattering down the steps. A little, thin lieutenant berates Porta for dirty boots and long hair.

‘Report to me in the morning for two hours punishment drill,’ sings out the lieutenant. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Private Serpelin, sir!’ Porta replies quickly, crashing his heels together.

‘I’ll remember you,’ promises the lieutenant, as he turns away.

‘You
bet
he will,’ grins Gregor, convincingly.

‘My
feet
are going to sleep,’ complains Barcelona.

‘I’m lying on a stone,’ I say.

‘Move it,’ suggests Gregor, yawning widely.

‘Or move yourself,’ comes in an irritable tone from the Old Man.

I roll away from the large stone I am lying on and drop my Mpi, which goes rattling away down the slope.

A bird screams piercingly from a tree. The others curse viciously and call me names. Only Tiny laughs. He does not care what happens as long as
something
does. A Sunday child, who believes nothing can go wrong for him.

Rasputin is nervous. He presses against the windscreen, which bulges outwards. Gregor has to go over and quieten him.

There is silence for some time. From the chìteau comes the sound of music and song. A dog howls long and mournfully. A guard party marches past down on the road. We hear sharp commands and the rattle of weapons.

‘Hell,’ cries Barcelona, ‘
now
we’re up shit creek all right!

Porta can’t change! Even if they do wipe their arses with gravel and don’t believe in God they’ll soon see he ain’t one of theirs!’

‘’E’ll be well away before they get to ’im,’ Tiny is optimistic. ‘Nobody what ain’t got pure shit under ’is bleedin’ ‘at’d stand there waitin’ to tell the neighbours ‘e’s over from the other bleedin’FPOI’

The Old Man pushes his Mpi up in front of him.

‘D’you think it’s the relief?’ asks Heide nervously.

‘Might be,’ answers the Old Man, ’and it might also be a patrol. We’ll find out!’

Porta marches to and fro, kicking his feet out in the Russian manner. He calls to a cat, which comes walking over the open ground with its tail in the air. It comes slowly over to him. He picks it up and begins to stroke it.

‘I’ll choke that sod, I will, if he drags a Soviet cat back with him,’ snarls the Old Man.

‘We’ll brainwash the bleeder, an’ make ’im a good Nazi,’ grins Tiny, happily. ‘We’ll soon get them Commie ideologies out of ’im. We’ve broke worse cases’n a bleedin’ Commie country cat. We’ll make the bleeder learn
Mein Kampf
by ‘eart!’

Several tanks start warming up. The air trembles with the noise of their heavy Otto motors.

‘T-34’s,’ says Heide, knowledgeably.

Heavy trucks roar at the other end of the town. Running feet and loud commands can be heard.

We strain our ears, listening, but it cannot be anything serious or they would not still be sitting at their party in the club.

Windows are opened wide and light splashes the grounds around the chìteau. Nobody seems to be worrying about the blackout. They probably do not consider the German Air Force dangerous any longer.

Women’s voices scream excitedly. We hear laughter and song. An accordion is being worked hard. There is the stamping of Russian dances. The women scream again.

‘They’re takin’ their clothes off, now,’ says Tiny, licking his lips lustfully. ‘There ain’t nothin’ as much fun as when they’re all goin’ at it in a ’eap in the middle 0’ the floor, an’ all the bare
arses bobbin’ up an’ down in time like a shoal of ‘errin’ winkin’ in the sun in August.’

‘Filthy pig,’ the Old Man scolds him. ‘Haven’t you anything else in your head?’

‘Let’s go over an’ find out, shall we,’ says Tiny. ‘I like bein’ what they call a
voyeur
!’

‘That might be fun!’ laughs Buffalo, pleased with the thought. ‘Then when the heathens’ve done their job we could take over!’

‘I ’ave ’eard that Russian wenches like to get on top of a man,’ says Tiny. ‘If we was to stick our old tomatoes inside there we could decide that question once and for all!’

We glare enviously at Porta who is standing quietly looking through the open window. He turns round, looks over at us and clicks his tongue.

‘Don’t you think we ought to cut ’im, just a
little
bit, this wicked Russian-German commissar feller, when we
do
get ’old of ’im?’ asks Tiny, expectantly.

‘Watch yourself,’ answers the Old Man sharply.

It seems to me we have been lying here for hours. My whole body itches and tingles.

Several owls flap around between the trees. A horned owl screams ominously.