The Commissar (13 page)

‘“I’ll remember you,” he screamed, breathin’ cheap beer and stinking fish straight into my face.

‘Later in the afternoon I complained that the helmet
they’d issued me with was too little, the greatcoat was too big, and the boots pinched my toes. That started something, all right. For the next three weeks we had our gasmasks on from morning to night. We only ’ad ’em off when we were eating. In the latrine we still had ’em on. When the rest of the company got fifteen minutes rest, Paust nobbled me.

‘“Atten
tion
!” he screamed, “gasmasks
on
! Forward
march
! Double
march
! One-two, one-two, one-two!”

‘I’m doubling straight for the barracks wall. Then comes the next order.

‘“Down! Forward crawl! Get that arse down. Prick an’ balls into the ground, you wicked little shower o’ monkey’s afterbirth, you!”

‘Straight through a pool o’ mud he drove me, an’ down through a water-filled tank trench like I was some kind of a submarine.

‘“Back an’ start again,” he shouted, disappointed that I’m still able to breathe.

‘When we’d got to the middle of the day and the sun was so high there wasn’t a single patch o’ shade anywhere on the parade-ground, I wasn’t runnin’ any more, I was staggerin’. The rubber facepiece of the gasmask was going in and out like a bellows. My rifle felt heavy as lead and was slippery all over with sweat. The heavy uniform you could’ve wrung out like a dishcloth, an’ God help you if you so much as loosened a button of it. In the afternoon they took us for a walk in the country. I got promoted, straightaway, to number one on the MG. Paust chased me on an’ on over them ploughed fields with that fucking machine-gun on my back. When he shouted “
Down
!” I went down like a log, never caring where I landed. Then we practised advancin’ in short rushes. I tell you, sometimes I’d run straight into a tree and the machine-gun’d give me a real welt across the back o’ the neck.

‘Then one day I gave up.’ Gregor throws his arms wide, and stares, cautiously, towards the long wing of the farmhouse where we know the Russians are taking cover. ‘That
afternoon, when I went down I stayed down. I’d got it into my head that I wasn’t going to take any more of it.’

‘Feldwebel Paust came rushing over to me, blowin’ on his whistle for dear life. I didn’t see him, but I could hear him. I’ll never forget that voice. I’ve often prayed to heaven to let me meet him out here somewhere.

‘“So you won’t get up then, machine-gunner Martin?” he howled at me. “By God, I’ll smash you, man, I’ll finish you right off! I won’t leave you be, till you’re nothing but a lump o’ quiverin’ jelly, beggin’ to be let die!”

‘I lay there in the middle o’ the ploughed field, and got my strength back with the help of hate. I didn’t know then, that that was just what he wanted. To be a good soldier you’ve got to be a good hater! If you don’t hate with all your might you can’t kill. Hate’s the strongest source of human energy. But there I was now, lying in the middle of a fuckin’ Westphalian field, outside the old Papal town o’ Paderborn. My whole face felt like a glowing, bubbling pancake, and I was near drowning in me own sweat inside the gasmask. The glasses of the eyepieces was so wet you couldn’t see through them. The heel’d fallen off my one boot. My uniform was torn to ribbons. My knees hurt, and blood was pouring from them. I think I’d sprained an ankle, but I forgot that when Paust an’ three others got me up and chased me on.

‘I threw myself down beside a tree, and could hardly hear Paust’s voice screaming at me. I knew he wouldn’t stop ’til tank-soldier Gregor Martin was crushed like a fly on the wall. I’d really wanted to be an officer, that’s why I’d volunteered, but that day by the tree on the bank of the river decided me that I’d never be an officer.

‘“Into the river,” he ordered me. “Forward,
march
! One-two, one-two, you sad sack!”

‘I got halfway to my feet, but fell again. My legs were simply unable to carry me.

‘The whistle shrilled.

‘Then I crawled. He wanted to see me before a court-martial
for refusing to obey an order, and you know how frightened we all are at the thought of a court-martial. Better the traditional Hell of the priests than Germersheim. I got to the water and crawled out into it like some fucked-up kind of crocodile. On the way I lost my steel helmet, but Paust kicked it in after me.

‘“Helmet,
on
!” he bawled. “
I’ll
tell you when to take it
off
!”

‘I crawled on the river bed, followed it down, I hadn’t strength enough left to swim. Two Unteroffiziers had to pull me out. An ambulance picked me up a little later. At first I thought it was taking me to the mortuary! The MO asked me who’d done it to me. But I knew the answer to that one. I said I’d fallen out of a window.

‘Eight days I was in hospital, and ten minutes after I got back with the rookie company they started again where they’d left off. I was out there goose-steppin’, with instep stretched, in the Westphalian bloody fields.

‘“Chest out! Tighten your arse!” screamed Feldwebel Paust, his voice echoing back from the woods. The instep had to be up at the level of your waist-belt.

‘Yes, we learnt it, and so effectively that we could have marched straight to our deaths with our insteps
still
pointing at the sky.’

‘
C
’
est la guerre
, we are the human offal of the war,’ whispers the Legionnaire, quietly. ‘It is our fate, so has Allah willed it, and this we must accept!’

We lie silent for a while, thinking over his hopeless soldier’s philosophy.

‘What’s this, what’s this, now,’ the Old Man scolds, softly. ‘Still lying here?’

‘We’re gone,’ says Albert, and disappears quickly into the bushes.

Gregor is at my heels. It is so dark we can only see a couple of yards in front of us.

I stumble over something which proves to be a tipped-over wheelbarrow. I curse quietly. A battered helmet with a
comb on top comes up on the far side. Faster than thought Gregor throws his bolas. It wraps itself round the Russian’s throat. He manages no more than a hoarse rattle before he goes down.

‘What the hell are you up to?’ asks Albert, nervously, pressing himself to the ground in fear.

‘Oh, Jesus, Jesus!’ he cries as he catches sight of the dead Russian. ‘I’m soon gonna get a nervous breakdown! The devil take that ol’ pappy of mine as just
had
to beat the drums for the Prussian Hussars! He shoulda stayed home in his grass hut, he should, and not gone gettin’ the best son he had mixed up in this terrible German war of revenge.’

‘Hell’s bells!’ shouts Gregor, in terror, as a colossal red flame splits the darkness. Like a fiery spire it shoots up towards the heavens. It folds out into a huge mushrooming cloud, like some horrible mirage, suddenly appearing from nowhere.

Half-blinded and deafened we stare into the devilish redness. It grows and grows, and becomes a brilliant carmine umbrella of enormous proportions. It spits out yellow and white spurts of fire, like flaming sprays of roses. Slowly the giant, raging fire-flower becomes millions of licking tongues of flame. The whole of the heavens and the battleground around us are coloured red.

Porta and two Russians come running out from the glowing redness; it is one thunderous, indescribable inferno.

‘Run dammit!’ cries the Old Man, desperately, tugging at my shoulder.

With a feeling of unreality I follow him. My feet move automatically.

A Russian, with a
Kalashnikov
slung across his chest, runs past us. A blast of heated air throws us to the ground.

In shock, we run and creep our way out into the ice-cold water of the stream. It is beginning to warm up, slowly. I dip my field-cap in the water and hold it over my face for protection.

‘
Tovarisch
!’ screams a terror-stricken Russian, as we run
into one another out in the middle of the stream. ‘Idiots!’ he yells, pointing to the roaring sea of flames. Then he dashes on, the water splashing up around his running feet.

After a while the rest of the section begins to collect around the remains of a shattered fountain. The granite Cossack on it has now not only lost his head, but also the rest of his torso. Only his stone trousers and boots are left standing in the basin.

‘What the devil was all that?’ I ask, dabbing burn ointment on the blisters which seem to be eating into my flesh.

‘It was that madman Porta who pulled the chain on us,’ snarls the Old Man, sending Porta an angry look.

‘But who the hell could’ve guessed it was a bloody great petrol dump,’ pants Gregor, pouring water over his red, blistered face.

‘I thought it was the handle of a safe I was turning,’ Porta excused himself. ‘It
looked
like one. You
know
, a bit of a turn to the left an’ a bit of a turn to the right and you’re a rich man. In this case, however, the result was a little different. I got a bit of a shock there, when I found myself in the middle of the world’s biggest bonfire, together with a coupla Ivans!’

‘What a lot of lying, rotten sods they all are,’ whines Gregor despondently, creeping down into his coat-collar against the icy cold. ‘They said we were coming here for a rest, and we fall into nothing more or less’n the worst kind of a shit-heap. They keep on tellin’ us the enemy’s crushed, and then what happens? Half the rotten Red Army’s pissin’ around back of the German lines. Oh god, what a rotten war! They’ve all got nothin’ but crap where their brains ought to be!’

Albert comes sauntering along, with his machine-pistol dangling from its sling round his neck. He is wearing a lady’s fur coat, a crazy-looking, gingery object, with fox-tails hanging down from its lapels. He has lipsticked his heavy mouth, and drawn big red circles around his eyes. He looks like a painting from the brush of a mad, surrealist artist.

‘What
do
you look like?’ asks the Old Man, open-mouthed.

‘I look like what I look like, man,’ he answers. He snatches a piece of bread from the fingers of a corpse and takes a bite of it, but spits it out again immediately.

‘Why can’t those mad geniuses back there send some Stukas over, an’ put those blasted guns out of action?’ asks Barcelona. He begins to kick a punctured football about.

The battle noises of tank-guns and field artillery can still be heard from the outskirts of the town.

It is easy to tell the sharp crack of tank-guns from the heavy boom of the field artillery. In between comes the characteristic sound of a bazooka, and when the heavy guns pause for a moment, the hysterical hammering of machine-gun fire.

‘Two men! Over to the park!’ the Old Man orders, pointing with his silver-lidded pipe.

Albert and I plod away. We have not gone far when we catch sight of a coal-black cat, crossing the road slowly and self-importantly with its tail erect.

‘We stay here,’ says Albert, decisively. ‘That’s bad luck, that is, a black cat crossin’ your path. Death and destruction’ll hit us, an’
hard
, if we go on!’

‘You’re right. We’ll wait here a bit,’ I say, shivering in my wet clothes. ‘Then we’ll go back and tell the Old Man we’ve been all through the town and haven’t observed anything.’

‘He’ll just about kill us, man, if he ever finds out we’ve took the piss out of him because of seein’ a black cat,’ chatters Albert, trying to think of a way out.

A house crashes down, tall fingers of flame shooting up from it. Not far away we hear the confused noise of hand-grenades exploding.

As we turn a corner we see Porta, tiptoeing down a narrow alley, bent over strangely and grunting all the time: ‘Oink! Oink!’

We halt in amazement and stare inquisitively after him, as he clambers up over a huge pile of rubble, and bends down to look through a hole in a wall.

‘Oink! Oink!’ he grunts, just like a real pig.

‘Gone mad!’ whispers Albert, his eyes round and shining whitely in the darkness. ‘I knew it’d happen. He’s been queer in his ways lately. Believe you me, man, it’s that cat that’s done it. The devil’s in every black cat.’

‘Must be a lot of devils then,’ I answer him. ‘Because there’s certainly a lot of black cats!’

‘Don’t you know that ol’ devil can turn himself into thousands of little devils if he wants to? Gotta be able to. Else how could there be a German devil an’ an American devil, an’ one in this place too?’

I shrug my shoulders, and watch Porta disappear, still grunting, behind the rubble-heap.

‘He thinks he’s a pig that’s been issued with an mpi,’ mumbles Albert, shaking his head despondently. ‘I see darkness, when I think what this war is on the way to turning us all into.’

When we get back the Old Man has no time to listen to our report. He is too busy giving one of the new men a talking-to.

‘I’m goin’ to look after you,’ he shouts, angrily. ‘Why’d you shoot those three prisoners?’

‘Isn’t that what we’re here for?’ asks one of the new boys, a Fahnenjunker-Gefreiter.

‘Get them heels together,’ rages the Old Man. ‘Stand up straight when you talk to me, you lazy man. And remember it’s Herr Feldwebel!’

The Fahnenjunker-Gefreiter clicks his heels together, and places his hands rigidly down along the seams of his trousers.

‘Very good. Herr Feldwebel,’ he replies, with a look of hate.